Sexy no Jutsu
by Ms. Videl Son
Summary: Part of the Lifelong Love series. “The purpose of this week’s assignment,” Iruka began, standing before his class of Cadets with a straight back and a smug expression. “Is to learn how to disguise yourself as the opposite sex.” Implied SasuHinaNaru.
1. Part One: Partners

**Title: **Sexy no Jutsu  
**Disclaimer:** Nuh-uh.  
**Rating:** PG ( K+ ) – for pervy pubescent thoughts and brief mentions of nudity.  
**Spoilers:** How can I spoil anything that hasn't actually happened?

**Summary: **Part of the "Lifelong Love" series. "The purpose of this week's assignment," Iruka began, standing before his class of Cadets with a straight back and a smug expression. "Is to learn how to disguise yourself as the opposite sex." Implied SasuHinaNaru.

Yes, another one.

* * *

**Part One: **Partners

"The purpose of this week's assignment," Iruka began, standing before his class of Cadets with a straight back and a smug expression. "Is to learn how to disguise yourself as the opposite sex."

"_Ehhhhhhhhh_?" was the collective shout of awe and confusion from the students.

"That's so stupid!"

"Why would we have to change_ genders _on a mission?"

"That's really gross!"

"I'm telling my parents..."

"_QUIET_!"

Instantly, the Cadets ceased chattering amongst themselves and returned their attention to the front of the room where their teacher remained standing, his eyebrow twitching with barely suppressed irritation. His patience had already slipped a little, but he was reigning it back admirably and maintaining his professional facade.

Iruka inhaled a deep breath and released it slowly before resuming his speech. "I assure you, this will be a worthwhile exercise to everyone," he continued, eyes roving along the aisles of raised seats surrounding him on all sides but one. "However, I understand that there might be some concerns – Yes, Sakura?"

Attention turned away from Iruka and focused on one of the students. Despite the large number of Cadets in the room, she was easy enough to spot amongst them thanks to her cotton candy-pink hair and wildly waving hand. "Sensei, I don't understand why it's important for us to know how to change genders on missions. Isn't it enough that we know how to disguise ourselves as someone else?"

"Very good question, Sakura," Iruka said, emphasizing his compliment with an approving smile and a nod. "As I was about to explain before I was so rudely interrupted," – a large portion of the class gulped and sunk down into their seats – "a ninja must be capable of disguising themselves as anyone, including members of the opposite sex. What if you, Sakura, needed to infiltrate a club that only allowed male members? Or what if you needed to disguise yourself as a specific person, but they happened to be a man?"

Sakura replied without missing a single beat. "I would use Transformation Jutsu to take on the appearance of a man."

Iruka smiled at her again, this time with a superior look that stated that he knew something she didn't. "Yes, but accuracy is important when attempting to fool adversaries, especially when they are unknown to you. Men and women each have habits specific to their genders that are not so simple to imitate.

"For instance," Iruka held up a single finger to emphasize his point. "What if Naruto" – Naruto's snores were interrupted for a second when his name was mentioned – "were forced to transform into you in order to complete a mission and completely failed to grasp your sense of feminine delicacy? It would be quite a sight to see him acting the way that he usually does while in your form, Sakura."

Sakura turned two shades darker than her hair and beat the unfortunate, sleeping Naruto on the head. Naruto jerked awake with a start, shoving the book he had been hiding behind off the edge of his desk.

"Ouch!" Inuzuka Kiba complained, rubbing the spot at which the book had made contact with his skull. "Watch it!"

Naruto was confused and defensive as his senses began to return to him. "Wha – ? I didn't do anything!"

"You hit me on the head with a freakin' book, moron!"

"I did not! It _fell_!"

"Alright, alright!" Iruka commanded, materializing between the two boys before a fist-fight could break out in the classroom. "That's enough of that."

As the two boys struggled to get around the bracing arms of their much stronger teacher, the clock tower bells chimed to announce the end of the school day.

Iruka glanced at the clock above the classroom door and sighed. "Alright, class. We'll continue this tomorrow. For homework, I want each of you to reflect upon the differences between boys and girls and write a one-page summary about them to be read aloud tomorrow." As snickers and covert giggles emerged from several members of the class, Iruka rolled his eyes and amended his instructions. "The_ psychological _and_ social_ differences between boys and girls, that is."

"_Awwwww..._"

Sasuke stood as the rest of the class rose to leave, thinking back on Iruka's words with a derisive snort. '_The only difference between boys and girls is that girls are more annoying._'

As he reached the end of the aisle, Sasuke stumbled. Regaining his balance against the desk nearest to him, he turned to admonish the person who had so rudely gotten in his way and faltered his grace. The menacing scowl he had procured for the clumsy idiot melted away as he realized who it was.

"I'm s-so sorry, Sasuke-san!" Hyuuga Hinata stammered, bowing so low that she nearly touched the desktop with her forehead. Her bangs brushed the knuckles of the hand he had left resting there for a brief moment before she rose slightly to apologize again. "I w-wasn't watching where I was g-going! I'm s-sorry!"

Tightening his fist until his nails dug into his palm, Sasuke snorted and pushed the stuttering Hyuuga out of his way. "It's fine," he said, taking the steps downward as fast as he possibly could without causing suspicion.

'_Stupid girls..._'

— — —

"...and they smell funny, too. The end."

Sasuke could hardly believe the drivel that his classmates were spouting about each other. It seemed that Iruka's homework assignment had been taken as an opportunity for a battle of the sexes, giving each student the ability to bask in the superiority that their sex supposedly awarded them. The commentary had been getting steadily worse as each person took the front of the room to read their essays, the need for rebuttal growing more intense with each veiled insult. For the last five turns, no one had even glanced at their papers but launched directly into immature mudslinging that left half the class glowering at the speaker.

Yamanaka Ino's turn was over, but she apparently felt the need to amend – as all the other girls had before her – one little detail of her overall point; "Except Sasuke-kun, of course," Ino said, holding a demure hand up to her cheek as she fluttered her eyelashes in Sasuke's direction. Sasuke sneered back, but the blonde girl hardly seemed to care. "He's much too cool, handsome, sexy – "

"Alright, alright," Iruka interrupted, sighing heavily. He waved her back to her seat with little hearts pulsing in her eyes. "Next up is...Uchiha Sasuke."

Sasuke rose and slumped to the front of the room, shoving his hands deep within his pockets and scowling about the room. Hardly anyone else had bothered to read from their papers, so Sasuke had decided to simply give an overall summary of his insights and be done with it quickly.

"Girls are annoying."

Having said all he wanted to say, Sasuke walked back to the stairs that ascended into the stands of desks, ignoring the vacant stares of his classmates as he passed. Their eyes remained fixated on the spot on which he had stood for those few brief seconds while he had delivered his report. A rogue breeze carried a few leaves past their stunned, frozen faces.

Blinking a few times, Iruka came back to himself. "Ahem...yes, well...next up is Hyuuga Hinata."

Unable to contain the urge, Sasuke shifted his eyes to the end of his row to observe Hinata as she prepared to take her turn in front of her peers. She hesitated in her seat for as long as she reasonably could, shaking as she pretended to search through her folder for her assignment. Sasuke could see it sitting right on top of her small pile of papers, ready and waiting at her fingertips.

When she could stall no longer, Hinata picked up her paper between both hands and, excusing herself as she passed Sasuke, descended the stairs to position herself in front of the class. Sasuke could both see and hear the paper crinkling between her trembling hands as she stood in the spotlight she tried so very hard to avoid.

"Um...I-I d-don't know m-many b-boys," she began; Sasuke could tell that she was stuttering worse than ever. "W-well, I d-do, b-but not p-p-personally. I m-mean..."

Hinata squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep, steadying breath. Even after two more of these she still looked as if she were going to be physically ill.

"I think th-that everyone is d-different, n-no m-matter what their s-s-se – " Hinata flushed bright red as she attempted to force out the taboo word, but ended up admitting defeat quickly in favor of a convenient synonym. "g-gender is."

Gulping, Hinata lowered her paper and stood shivering on the spot. She bit her lip as if fighting to keep her mouth shut, making Sasuke wonder – maybe even worry ever-so-slightly – that she really _was _going to be sick. Not that he really cared about her all that much, he just didn't want to see someone vomit so close to lunch period was all. She could come down with a deadly, flesh-eating disease for all he cared as long as he wasn't about to eat in four or five hours.

Iruka placed a concerned hand on Hinata's shoulder, leaning down close to her ear to ask softly "Hinata, are you okay?"

Hinata nodded, keeping her jaw firmly locked into position.

"Do you need to see the nurse?"

Hinata shook her head from side to side.

"Are you sure...?"

Again, she nodded.

"Alright...please take your seat."

Hinata ascended the stairs and, without issuing a verbal apology for sliding past Sasuke this time, sat down quickly. Her assignment was crumpled and twisted in her shaking hands.

"Okay, next up..." Iruka continued with the oral reports, but Sasuke had ceased to find the immature bantering of the students interesting long ago. Ignoring the class proceedings, he reached into his school bag and withdrew a small, individual-sized carton of milk that he had been saving for lunch.

Sasuke stared hard at the label for a few seconds, squeezing the carton in his hand with indecision, as he considered the repercussions of what he was possibly about to do. On the one hand, assuaging Hinata's nausea would be best for the class (himself, in particular, considering he was sitting right next to her) and could possibly elevate his "always prepared for the worst" reputation.

On the other, showing any sort of kindness toward a girl (even if he had known her for practically all his life so far) would send the wrong message to everyone around them and could potentially incite a riot amongst his fangirls (not that he was bragging, or anything; it was simply a possibility).

Glancing over at Hinata, Sasuke became alarmed (for lack of better term) at how much she was swaying in her seat. Her eyelids drooped low over her pearly-white cornea, which were more pronounced than usual against the greenish pallor of her skin. In short: she looked worse than ever.

Just as Sasuke was about to pull his hand decisively out of his bag, he stopped.

"Oi, Hinata, you don't look so good," Kiba observed, turning around in his seat to look up at the ailing Hyuuga. "Want some gingerale? I've got some in my bag..."

"I'm ok – " Hinata interrupted herself and clapped a hand to her mouth.

Whipping out his proffered can of soda, Kiba slammed it down on the desk beside Hinata and commanded, "Drink it. You'll feel better."

With a defeated half-smile, Hinata thanked Kiba with a shy nod of her head and accepted the drink. She carefully popped the mouth of the can open while the speaker down on the floor railed against girls with a loud, impassioned voice and took a small sip.

Her color slowly returned to normal as she drank the gingerale and Sasuke realized quickly that his own offering was no longer needed. With an irritated snort, he dropped the milk carton back into his bag, thinking that he would buy himself some juice from the cafeteria later.

"Last up is...Uzumaki Naruto."

From Sasuke's other side, Naruto snorted and jerked awake. "Wha...?"

Crossing his arms in front of his chest, Iruka narrowed his eyes in Naruto's direction. "Did you even do the assignment, Naruto?"

Naruto's face was dumbfounded. "...What assignment?"

A single drop of sweat slid down the side of Iruka's face. "I'll take that as a 'no,' then."

Smatterings of laughter broke out across the classroom as Naruto rubbed a sheepish hand against the back of his neck, grinning from ear to ear. If Sasuke hadn't felt that he knew better, he would have suspected that Naruto neglected to write his essay on purpose for the sake of attention.

"Okay, moving on," Iruka said, coughing into his closed fist to regain the attention of his students. "The next part of the assignment will involve breaking into pairs. I want each of you to find a partner – one girl and one boy to each team, please – and take a seat next to them while I explain the next portion."

The Cadets warily looked around the classroom, suspicious of each other after the hour of rousing boy-against-girl oral reports. No one seemed particularly eager to team up with one of their sworn enemies and their sluggish reaction to Iruka's orders illustrated just that.

His eyebrow twitching menacingly again, Iruka put his hands on his hips and addressed the class, this time with an air of carefree threat. "I could always assign partners, if you want. That would sure be easier..."

This time the movement was immediate; almost every student was out of his or her seat searching for an appropriate partner of the opposite sex that wouldn't be so horrible to work with, each of them terrified of being placed with someone they couldn't tolerate.

From the front of the class, Iruka was beaming once again. "Good! Once you've found your partner, raise your hands."

"Oh yeah? Well, I saw him first!"

"What? How could you see him first, you twit? You were across the room!"

"Distance means nothing to the eyes of love!"

"Oh, pul-_eeze_..."

Sasuke – one of the few students who still found themselves unmotivated to find a partner quickly before being assigned one by the teacher – slowly turned to the back of the classroom as a nauseating feeling of foreboding began growing in the pit of his stomach. Grouped along the last row of seats was a gaggle of bickering girls, twelve in all, each ready to fight at a moments notice. Sasuke's apprehension grew as he realized that a few of them were pointing directly at him.

"It's true!" Sakura, who happened to be at the center of the group staring down Ino, proclaimed, hands fisted down at her sides. "Just because _you _don't love him deeply enough – "

"_I_ don't love him enough?" Ino countered, her voice reaching a pitch that made Kiba wince visibly. "I've had my eye on him since I was_ five_! You didn't start liking him until you were, what? Six?"

"Time doesn't matter in love! It's all about _feeling_, Ino-pig!"

"Yeah, well, you're about to _feel_ my fist right in your great, big forehead, you hussy!"

"Why, you – "

With a sudden feeling of panic spurring him on, Sasuke stood in his seat and raced to the end of his row, target in sight. She was almost out of range, reaching up to tap that _dobe_ on the shoulder –

"Um...ah...N-Naruto-ku – "

Grabbing her wrist firmly in his hand just in the nick of time, Sasuke lifted it high above his head in victory.

Panting a little, Sasuke felt calming relief spread throughout his body as Iruka called out "Uchiha Sasuke and Hyuuga Hinata. You're team three."

* * *

**Authors Notes:** Okay, it's officially been decided that this story is going to be a FiveShot, not a ThreeShot as originally (hoped) anticipated. The chapter titles will include:

**Part One:** Partners  
**Part Two:** Guidelines  
**Part Three:** Step One  
**Part Four:** Step Two  
**Part Five:** Step Three

That should give you just the _tiniest_ hint of what's to come (though, admittedly, that's still pretty vague). Everything else will be a complete surprise **n.n**

Anyway, the second installment is on the way. And, yes, this story is connected to "Stuck On You" and "'Till Death Do We Part," or my "Lifelong Love" series as I've come to call it. This story is a sequel to both, taking place not terribly long before the Rookie 9 graduate as Genins (making them about eleven, give or take a few months). It will become more clear how everything's connected by chapter three, I think.

Haven't started beta-ing again yet...

_**. ( . Ms Videl Son . ) . **_

– _Love can be black and white. SasuHina._


	2. Part Two: Guidelines

**Title: **Sexy no Jutsu  
**Disclaimer:** Nuh-uh.  
**Rating:** PG ( K+ ) – for pervy pubescent thoughts and brief mentions of nudity.  
**Spoilers:** How can I spoil anything that hasn't actually happened?

**Summary: **Part of the "Lifelong Love" series. "The purpose of this week's assignment," Iruka began, standing before his class of Cadets with a straight back and a smug expression. "Is to learn how to disguise yourself as the opposite sex." Implied SasuHinaNaru.

It gets more interesting from here...

* * *

**Part Two: **Guidelines

Sasuke slumped down into the nearest seat, dragging Hinata down with him. She squealed a little as they landed on the bench with a hard thump, but otherwise made no complaints about Sasuke's domineering actions.

"Damn!" he heard a spite-filled female voice say from somewhere behind him.

Another one shared the same sentiments. "Hinata got him...no fair."

"And I was looking _so _forward to showing him the shrine I made in my closet, too..."

The last comment made Sasuke shiver. It had been a near miss, to say the least. If he had hesitated only a few more seconds, one of those delusional harpies could have grabbed him and...and...well, what could happen after that was something that made Sasuke nauseous simply imagining.

"Um...S-Sasuke...san?"

Sasuke inclined his head slightly to look at his partner, who was sitting a little closer to him than was absolutely necessary. Deciding it was best if he pretended not to notice, Sasuke replied with a simple, gruff, "What?"

Hinata winced as if he'd slapped her across the face. "Uh...y-you're kind of hurting m-my wrist..."

Belatedly realizing that he was indeed still holding her wrist – and squeezing it, too – Sasuke dropped it as if it were a poisonous snake. In his relief at grabbing the only suitable female partner in the room, he must have forgotten to let her go. That had to be it.

"Sorry," he muttered, crossing his arms over his chest where they belonged. As he did so, Sasuke pointedly looked away from Hinata, declaring silently that the conversation was over.

Hinata seemed to take the hint and grew quiet herself, accumulating another point in Sasuke's favor. He could see himself hating her less and less as the project wore on if she maintained the don't-speak-unless-spoken-to attitude that Sasuke found himself growing quite fond of.

"Does everyone have a partner?" Iruka called out across the class, raising his voice so as to be heard over the noise.

"I don't," came a sullen voice from the other side of the room. Sasuke leaned around Hinata to see Naruto raising a slack hand above his head for Iruka to see, glowering at the pair beside him as if they had teamed up to kill his puppy. Sakura returned his glower with a triumphant raspberry and clutched Kiba's arm tighter, despite his attempts to shake her off.

Iruka looked around the room a couple of times, counting students and checking for anyone else left without a partner. Finding none, he called out, "I guess we're going to have to have a group of three. Who's willing to let Naruto work with them?"

There was a lot of restless shifting, but no volunteers. It seemed that, as usual, Naruto was the odd man out. Served him right, in Sasuke's opinion, for being such a moron.

A soft, shaking voice from perilously close to Sasuke's ear spoke up on Naruto's behalf. "Um...h-he can w-work with us, Sensei."

Smiling brightly, Iruka scribbled something down on his clipboard. "Ah, thank you. Naruto, you'll be part of team three with Sasuke and Hinata."

— — —

'_I never should have let go of her hand_,' Sasuke thought, shooting a bitter glare at his male partner at the opposite end of the table. Naruto replied by pulling down his lower eyelid with a middle finger and sticking his tongue out. '_If I had known she was going to let the dobe onto our team, I would have sat on it._'

School was finally out for the day, giving the students of Iruka-sensei's year seven class ample opportunity to meet up with their teammates and get a head start on their projects. Instead, most of them headed to their individual homes or friend's houses, griping and complaining as they walked about the enormous workload that awaited them over the weekend (why do today what isn't due 'till next week?)

Only two teams resisted the lazy pull of procrastination and remained on campus to begin work on their reports. Immediately after the bells had rung to signal the end of class, Sakura had dragged an unwilling Kiba into the library, demanding rather than requesting that he forget saving their work for another day.

Team three – against Naruto's will – had chosen to meet outside in the courtyard instead and sat at a previously unoccupied picnic table in the shade while they went over the sheet of printed guidelines provided by Iruka. Naruto sat at the far end of the table, well away from Sasuke, moping and grumbling under his breath.

Doing his utmost to ignore the dobe (who wasn't really paying any attention to him or Hinata, either), Sasuke read aloud from their objectives sheet:

_**Transformation no Jutsu:**__ Group Project_

_**Due Date:**__ Monday_

_The idea behind this project, as I have explained in class, is to master the ability to transform into the opposite gender. To do this, you will not only need to understand the subtleties of the Transformation Jutsu previously learned in class, but also the differences between each gender. In order to do this, you and your partner (who should be of the opposite sex from yourself) will need to perform the three objectives below._

_1 ) Use the Transformation Jutsu to create carbon copies of each other, paying close attention to the physical characteristics specific to your partner as well as their gender. **(I**__**t is not necessary to perfectly transform anything beneath your clothing! A superficial transformation will be fine.)**_

_2 ) You will walk around Konoha as your partner to determine if you are able to properly imitate their gender-specific qualities. As you do this, your partner will be utilizing the concealment and spying techniques learned in Unit Three to both track your progress and keep a diary of it. You will take turns transforming and recording and the diaries will be_ _turned in to me for credit._

_3 ) You will deliver a joint oral report in which you detail your findings and demonstrate your transformation to the class. _

_**Grading Rubric:**_

_You will each be given an individual grade as well as a group score. The chart below details what each step is worth._

_**Transformation**__ – 25 percent  
__**Diary**__ – 25 percent  
__**Oral Report**__ – 50 percent_

_Additionally, you will each fill out a grading sheet on your teammate so that I can properly tally your individual scores. This will enable me to know who did what and how much each partner contributed to the overall success of the project._

_Please do your best!_

Sasuke finished reading and wrinkled his nose. The project sounded stupid, to say the least, and the group grade worried him now that Naruto was a part of his team. If the dobe messed up his chances for an A...

"Why are we outside, anyway?" Naruto whined, gazing longingly in the direction of the school building. Apparently, he hadn't been paying even the slightest bit of attention to their assignment details, focused as he was on the shadows flitting to-and-fro behind the glass of the library windows. "Aren't people supposed to study in the _library_?"

Sasuke, his already weak patience wearing perilously thin, growled at his childishly pouting teammate. "Not that you would know anything about this, _dobe_, but a person can study anywhere as long as it's possible to concentrate. And, no, concentrating on some pink-haired harpie doesn't count."

Naruto turned on the bench and slid one of his sleeves up past his elbow, menacingly revealing his bicep. "Don't call Sakura-chan a pink-haired harpie!"

"Would you prefer 'annoying girl with the abnormally large forehead,' then?"

"That's it!" Naruto shouted, pushing up his other sleeve and leaping to his feet. "I'm gonna kick your ass, you bastard!"

Sasuke narrowed his eyes and remained seated, chin resting delicately on his hands. "I'd like to see you try."

"Why...you...!"

"St-Stop!" Hinata, the third, forgotten member of the group, squealed, her eyes squeezed shut and her hands fisted near her mouth. "D-Don't fight, please!"

Realizing simultaneously that the girl was both right and absolutely horrified, Sasuke backed down with an annoyed "Che." He looked away from his group members, focusing on nothing in particular in the distance.

Naruto, however, wasn't about to let the argument drop. "Oh, so you're scared, then? I guess Hinata-chan just gave you the perfect excuse to be lame and sit on your ass, didn't she?"

Sasuke did his best to ignore the jibe, but he could feel his hackles rising again in spite of his forced self-control.

"N-Naruto-kun...please...," Hinata pleaded, getting off the picnic table bench herself to place herself between her group members. She looked as petrified as Sasuke had ever seen her from his pretending-not-to-watch standpoint. "L-Let's start working on our p-project. W-We shouldn't f-fight like this..."

Out of the corner of his eye, Sasuke could see Naruto push (well, more like _gently guide_) Hinata out of his way so that he could face Sasuke again. The dobe put his big, grinning face right up to Sasuke's and jeered, "That's it, isn't it? You're a big chicken who uses a girl to get out of his fig – "

Naruto was silenced momentarily by a fist colliding with his teeth.

Hinata screamed and hid her eyes, but the fight was already over. Sasuke had won, easily, and Naruto had lost, pathetically.

Naruto brought his hands up to his mouth and began voicing his agony in a voice more loud and obnoxious than usual. "_Auuugh_! You bashtard, that _wreally huwrt_!"

"N-Naruto-kun!" Hinata cried, leaping backwards and out of Naruto's way as he started thrashing around on the grass.

With a victorious smirk, Sasuke said, "Serves you right,_ dobe_."

After bestowing upon Sasuke a horrified and disappointed look, Hinata dropped down to the ground to administer aid to the wildly-flailing Naruto. Sasuke felt the irritation welling up within him again as she did her best to help while avoiding getting hit herself with either one of his elbows or knees, all of which were flying in random directions as he screamed in agony.

She tried pulling his hands away from his mouth so that she could see the extent of his injuries, but he rolled out of her way, allowing the blood to gush freely from between his fingers. "You ashhole! You bwoke my mouf!"

Hinata winced as Naruto cursed, but tried valiantly again to help. "Please, l-let me see, Naruto-kun..."

Naruto ignored her in favor of complaining more loudly than ever. "What if you knocked my teef out, huh? Shakura-shan will hate me!"

"N-Naruto-kun...," Hinata whispered softly, slowly withdrawing her hands to her sides. She began wringing them with what Sasuke assumed was indecision and biting her lip with obvious anxiety.

"Hmph," Sasuke snorted, grabbing the guideline sheet off the table and stuffing it into his formerly discarded bag. He just didn't have the time or inclination to deal with this stuff. "I'm leaving," he announced, throwing the strap of his bag over his shoulder as he stalked away from the bloodied scene.

"W-Wait, Sasuke-san!" Hinata called after him, her voice muffled by the distance between them.

Sasuke ignored her and didn't even deign to look back. He was through with idiocy for the day.

In an uncharacteristic display of temper, Sasuke snarled angrily and punched a hole in a random tree near the school gates. Shoving his hands (one of them throbbing with ignored pain) deep into his pockets, he muttered, "Girls are _really_ annoying."

* * *

**Authors Notes:** Okay, the second installment of "Sexy no Jutsu" is complete. There should be two or three more to come, making this a FiveShot instead of the originally anticipated Two or ThreeShot. Sigh.

Also, another project revolving around this fic could potentially be in the works soon, but I'll save any details about it until I've got confirmation of it. Not to worry, though; I'm sure I'll know _something_ concrete by the end. Everyone cross your fingers and wish really,_ really _hard!

Oh, and in case you're interested, the Authors Notes in Part One have been edited. Just so you know.

_**Up Next...**_**Part Three:** Step One

Oh yeah, un-beta'd. I did go back and self-edit, though.

_**. ( . Ms Videl Son . ) .**_

– _Love can be black and white. SasuHina._


	3. Part Three: Step One

**Title: **Sexy no Jutsu  
**Disclaimer:** Nuh-uh.  
**Rating:** PG ( K+ ) – for pervy pubescent thoughts and brief mentions of nudity.  
**Spoilers:** How can I spoil anything that hasn't actually happened?

**Summary: **Part of the "Lifelong Love" series. "The purpose of this week's assignment," Iruka began, standing before his class of Cadets with a straight back and a smug expression. "Is to learn how to disguise yourself as the opposite sex." Implied SasuHinaNaru.

And I quote: "Hyuuga, take your top off."

* * *

**Part Three:** Step One

"G-Good morning, Sasuke-san."

Upon hearing his name called, Sasuke turned to identify the speaker. It was Hinata, his Transformation no Jutsu Project partner who happened to have an unfortunate crush on his other, much more idiotic partner. She was standing under a tree just beyond the school gates through which he had just passed, looking about as pleased to see him as the rest of the class was to see Naruto every morning.

Not that he was particularly glad to see her, or anything, but Sasuke was offended on principle. "What?" he demanded, frowning at her.

Hinata, exercising that silly little habit of hers, looked down at her twiddling fingers as she fought to say what she meant to. "Um...I...I w-was wondering...S-Since we...and...and then..."

"_What?_" Sasuke demanded again. Hinata shrank away from him as if she expected to be hit. Sasuke ignored the little twinge of guilt in the pit of his stomach; she deserved a bit of rudeness for what had happened the day before.

Hinata took a deep, steadying breath and tried again. "I was j-just going to a-ask you if you wanted to do the pr-project at my house today."

"Your house?" Sasuke repeated, running the idea through his mind.

He had to admit that he liked it, considering that there would be a greater likelihood of progress when Naruto was sufficiently far away from Sakura. Additionally (even though he admitted to having no real basis for this assumption), he figured that the privacy of Hinata's bedroom would be more conducive to concentration than, say, the picnic table they had used during their first group meeting.

Sasuke wasn't about to elaborate any of this to Hinata, however, so he chose to reply with one of his usual, single-syllable answers. "Sure."

Hinata's shoulders (which had been oddly tense throughout their brief conversation, Sasuke suddenly noticed) slumped in obvious relief. "Okay, so should we w-walk home together?"

Hinata's second suggestion resonated throughout Sasuke's mind as if someone had just rung a gigantic bell inside his head. "Uh...yeah, sure."

Beaming brightly at her success, Hinata said one last thing before scurrying off towards the school building, a suspiciously cheerful bounce in her step: "I'll go tell Naruto-kun, then!"

As the breeze she generated by rushing past him rustled his long bangs, Sasuke felt the happy bell inside him split right down the middle.

— — —

That afternoon, as Sasuke and Hinata walked alone together on their way to the Hyuuga compound, conversation was both minimal and awkward. It was as if the silence spoke for itself and no one much liked what it had to say.

"Wh-What time did Naruto-kun say he would be done with his detention...?" Hinata queried finally, marking herself as the first to brave conversation.

Unfortunately, as the throbbing vein in Sasuke's temple and his clenched jaw would surely attest to, Naruto was possibly the worst subject she could have picked that day. He was getting oh-so-tired of hearing about the dobe, after all. "Four," he replied sharply.

"Oh..."

Out of the corner of his keen eye, Sasuke caught Hinata subtly checking her watch. "It's only two-thirty, _in case you were wondering_," he commented, the flavor of spite on his tongue. The resulting flush and the quick drop of Hinata's hand to her side appeased Sasuke's bad mood a little.

"O-Oh..."

Luckily, once they had reached the center of town, the noisy streets of Konoha provided enough background noise so that neither Sasuke nor Hinata felt any further obligation to fill the empty void between them with even emptier words.

Business was booming in the shopping district that afternoon, – mothers dragging small children by the hand towards the barber shop, workers rushing out of restaurants after late lunches, street vendors attempting to snare unwitting customers with false promises – flooding the earth-paved streets with a startling number of people. This gave Sasuke and Hinata little room to walk separately, forcing them to practically cling to one another or risk getting lost within the swarm.

Sasuke had been pushed forward into Hinata's back more than a few times while she slowly attempted to navigate the crowd, excusing herself to everyone she passed.

"Oh! I'm so sorry – excuse me!" she cried, apparently baffled as to whether she should apologize to the man who had stepped on her foot or the woman who had bumped her shoulder first.

In Sasuke's opinion, it was the multitude of people willing to take advantage of Hinata's passivity that should be apologetic. The guy who had stepped on her foot – all three hundred and fifty pounds of him – had given Hinata a temporary limp and, if the way she was rubbing her bicep was any indication, the woman that had collided with her had left behind a bruise.

"Outta the way!" a particularly rough voice shouted. The clanking sounds of a fully-loaded wagon came and went as the speaker passed.

"Ahh!" Hinata squealed, flying backwards as she was pushed out of yet another person's way. Only with the quick reflexes of an Uchiha prodigy was Sasuke able to catch her before she hit the ground and prevent her from being trampled by the oncoming flow of pedestrian traffic.

They were both knocked backward a few steps in the resulting momentum of the fall, but Sasuke managed to keep them upright by digging his heels into the tightly-packed dirt of the street. He allowed Hinata to remain limp in his arms for the time being, ignoring the complaints of people rushing past.

"Don't stop in the middle of the freaking road!"

"People are trying to walk here, you know!"

"Stupid kids! You don't have any respect for a tight schedule!"

After returning the glare of a man who apparently thought a rude hand gesture sufficed to express his irritation, Sasuke brought his attention back to the felled Hinata. "Are you okay?"

"F-Fine," she lied, holding a hand under her bleeding nose to staunch the flow a bit. It didn't help much, however, and the vital liquid dripped over the back of her hand as it oozed through her fingers.

Sasuke looked up and glared intently into the crowd in front of them, searching with the eyes of a vengeful predator. Spotting his prey up ahead – a skinny, grinning street vendor attempting to peddle used goods from a rickety-looking cart to the passers-by – his eyes narrowed with deadly intent.

Hefting Hinata back onto her own feet, Sasuke grabbed her by the wrist and, with a bit of clever maneuvering through the crowd, caught up with the man as he stopped to show an "antique" watch to a gullible-looking old lady.

"Not valuable? Why, my good lady, that only takes time! In a few years you'll be able to sell this for _three times _what you've paid me!"

"Really? Is that so?"

"Oh, yes. Do you believe that I would be able to lie to a charming, intelligent woman such as yourself?"

"No...No, I suppose not."

As Sasuke drew level with the cart, he began surveying the area shrewdly. There was the old vendor, – who looked about as trustworthy as a snake in a bird's nest – the blushing old woman, and the wagon loaded full of broken, useless items that the dealer was attempting to pass off as antiques. Most of the man's products were set up on display on a set of badly-made shelves that he had probably installed himself, but a few of the cheaper pieces were strung across the top using a length of garden-variety rope.

Smirking as the idea entered his mind, Sasuke tugged hard on Hinata's arm and pulled her into the shadow of a Ramen shop sign. He peeked over the top and, confirming that this was the best position for attack, reached down to the kunai pouch at his side with his free hand and pulled the button free of it's snap.

"Wh-What are you doing, Sasuke-san?" Hinata asked, sounding distinctly nervous. She gripped his sleeve tightly in her fist as if hoping to pull him back before he could do something awful.

Sasuke ignored her and, after withdrawing a kunai from his extensive stock, took very careful aim...

"_Aiiiiee!_"

The rope holding several of the vendor's products across the top of his cart snapped, causing an avalanche of clay teapots, fragile ornaments and tarnished time-keeping devices. The vendor himself was thrown backwards into the oncoming traffic of people as one of the larger items – a Cuckoo clock which had been sitting precariously on the edge of one of his dilapidated shelves – caught him in the chest, causing him and many of the unfortunate bystanders to fall in a pile right at Sasuke's feet.

With a satisfied smirk, Sasuke left his hiding place and walked straight through the struggling tangle of people, taking great care to step on the face of the vendor who had bloodied Hinata's nose. "Out of the way," he snarled, grinding his heel into the man's nose before leaping clear of the fray. Hinata, pulled along behind Sasuke by the firm grip he still had on her wrist, did her best to step over and around the people her companion had felled on her behalf.

"S-Sasuke-san!" Hinata hissed, glancing fearfully over her shoulder at the mess they'd left behind. "W-Why did you do that?"

Sasuke replied with a shrug only and squeezed Hinata's wrist tighter. She was still clinging to his sleeve, he noted with just a hint of satisfaction.

They made it to the edge of town quickly after that as the people who had witnessed the event made way for them, spreading apart together as one like the Great Red Sea had for Moses. Once they were completely clear of the crowds, Sasuke slowed his pace and allowed the stumbling Hinata to catch her breath.

They stopped for a short break beneath a tall oak on the side of the road, Hinata leaning down to prop herself up on her knees as she panted. "Wh...Why did you do that?" she asked again, raising her head enough to look up at Sasuke properly. The blood from her nose – which had been fairly minimal to begin with – was already dried on her upper lip and chin.

Sasuke could feel his own blood flowing into his face at a rapid pace, causing him to feel abnormally warm in the crisp Autumn weather. "Do what?"

"Ruin that man's cart," Hinata replied, her breathing controlled once again. "Y-You broke his things."

Sasuke gulped before replying, attempting to force his rapidly beating heart back down into his chest. He worried, vaguely, what it was doing up so high; was it doing some sort of weird dance with his Adam's Apple? "He was a jerk."

"But that doesn't mean that you sh-should destroy his cart," Hinata scolded, straightening her back so that she was standing at her usual height. "And – And other people were hurt, too!"

"That wasn't my fault," Sasuke muttered, casting his eyes away from her after a strong surge of guilt. "They were in the way."

Hinata, in a surprisingly bold display of courage, moved around to Sasuke's side so that she could look him straight in the eye. "But someone could be really hurt! What if they've broken a bone or hit their head or...or...something else like that? They might have to go to the hospital!"

Anger started to rise up within Sasuke, overwhelming the guilt Hinata had inspired in him only seconds before. Why did she have to get so bent out of shape over a stupid favor? It wasn't like he had potentially destroyed a man's livelihood for _his own _benefit!

Sasuke snorted in frustration and turned bodily away from her, continuing on his own towards the Hyuuga compound. "Che!" Let her be that way, then.

"W-Wait! Sasuke-san!"

— — —

As it turned out an hour later, Hinata wasn't very good at ninjutsu.

"Try it again," Sasuke commanded, slumped over and leaning on his folded knees as a frustrated Hinata struggled to force her fingers into the right position.

"I - I am!" she complained, squeezing her eyes shut tight. A few seconds and a quiet "poof" later, a very strange-looking boy took her place.

Sasuke's eyes and voice were both deadpan. "That doesn't look anything like me."

Opening her eyes, Hinata looked down at herself. Her disappointment was obvious when her expression fell. "I'm s-sorry..."

Hinata's bad transformation looked more like a mixture of herself and her partner than one or the other. She had finally gotten Sasuke's patented hairstyle correct, but the color was all wrong; it was a dark, indigo blue color, just like Hinata's natural hue. Additionally, her figure was somewhere between male and female, making it look as if Sasuke had suffered at the hands of a very bad transgender surgeon.

Sasuke pushed himself up off the floor and, crossing the tatami-matted floor with quick and decisive steps, began to circle Hinata like a hawk. "You don't have enough muscle mass," he commented, lifting one of her arms to indicate the flabby bicep. "And you still look too girly," he added, looking straight into her softly-rounded face.

Hinata looked down to the floor, taking the full brunt of Sasuke's criticism with no objection. Her eyes were half-lidded and shiny as she apologized yet again, "I'm sorry..."

It was time to go for the compliment sandwich, Sasuke decided. Reaching up, he tugged sharply on one of the long bangs she had managed to copy perfectly. "But you finally got the hair right."

Hinata blinked her eyes rapidly as if she couldn't believe her ears. She ventured a shy peek up at him through the mass of hair she had conjured. "R-Really...?"

Sasuke rubbed it through his fingers as if he were thinking about purchasing her. '_It's a lot softer than mine, though..._'

Feeling the heat begin to spread through his cheeks again, Sasuke let the piece of hair within his grasp go quickly. "But the color's all wrong."

This time, Hinata smiled and emitted a little giggle as she apologized. "Sorry..."

Sasuke smiled a little as well, though his was much less perceptible than hers. It was nice to know that he could make her laugh instead of cry and scold him for being mean. For the first time all day, Sasuke felt like a worthwhile human being.

"_Oi_! Let me go, you jerks!"

Hinata returned to herself with a startled "poof" as the angered shouts of some moron rang out across the Hyuuga grounds. "N-Naruto-kun?"

"I said let me go! I'm here to do a project with Hina – _aah_! What're you going to do with that?"

So it _was_ the dobe.

"I-I'd better go help him!" Hinata cried, rushing past Sasuke and out her bedroom door with all the speed of panic.

"Che," Sasuke replied to the vacant room, slumping back down onto the floor. Naruto always had a way of ruining things, he thought.

Leaning back on his hands, Sasuke glared up at Hinata's blank, boring ceiling, intent on pouting for as long as it took for the girl herself to come back with Naru-tard. Ceasing to find that interesting for more than half a minute, the Uchiha prodigy lowered his gaze and, taking advantage of a prime opportunity, took a proper look around the room.

It was a lot less girly than he'd anticipated, Sasuke belatedly realized. Sure, he'd expected it to be plainer than, say, Ino's room (which he'd had the unfortunate experience to be bound and gagged in once), but, for a girl who claimed to love vibrant color, there was a significant lack of it. There was white, light blue and a few splotches of purple as far as the eye could see, but none of the orange he had half-expected to be on every surface. There was no yellow, either, and the aforementioned blue was a shade that he thought might begin with a "P" (Periwrinkle? Permawinkle? Whatever.) instead of the bright sky-color he had anticipated.

There were no ruffles, either, which also surprised him. Weren't girls supposed to be all apeshit over frills and junk? They even _wore_ them, for the love of all things holy in the universe. That he would never be able to understand; how could you be prepared for a surprise attack if you had half-a-dozen pink, flowery layers of fabric weighing you down?

Girls just didn't make sense. Not even Hinata, who seemed to avoid the usual feminine items that girls collected like the plague. There were no dolls, no makeup jars on her vanity, no posters of famous boy bands or covertly-taken snapshots of Sasuke on her walls – nothing but a bed, night stand, dresser, desk and small vanity in the corner. Even the ratty stuffed animal (the only one she seemed to have, oddly enough) that lounged against her pillow was gender-neutral and –

Sasuke's eyes paused in his vain search for feminine items and lingered on the ratty blue Teddy Bear he had spotted on her bed. '_It...It couldn't be..._'

Straining his ears for sounds of footsteps in the hallway, Sasuke found that he could hear nothing over Naruto's continuous childish ranting. " – this the way you treat _guests_ around here, or – ?"

Satisfied that he wasn't about to be walked in on, Sasuke climbed to his feet and strode over to the love-worn bear for a proper look. He reached down and picked it up to better examine it and began taking in all the details of it's threadbare body.

The thing had to be almost ten years old, but there was no way to tell how long it had suffered if it happened to be Hinata's favorite childhood item. It had been loved so long and so hard that its fur was falling out in patches and its head lolled from side to side as if it had a broken neck, despite the tattered and listless ribbon that attempted to hold it upright. Even it's eyes – once shiny, glassy buttons – were chipped, making it look as if it had gone blind in its old age.

However, Sasuke thought with an almost tender smile, this was definitely the one he remembered.

"Geeze, it's like they thought I was a criminal, or something..."

"I'm s-so sorry, Naruto-kun..."

"I mean, what kind of thief would try to break in during broad daylight? He'd hafta be some kind of idiot!"

"I'm really v-very sorry..."

Sasuke put the bear back in its place quickly and hopped into the center of the room. He moved not a moment too soon because the door opened a few seconds later, revealing Hinata and Naruto just outside.

"You're _late_, dobe," Sasuke sneered, doing his best to pretend that he hadn't been up to anything before they entered.

Naruto scowled at him, looking very much like some sort of angry cat. "I had detention with Iruka-sensei."

Sasuke returned the scowl with a know-it-all smirk. "Yeah, the entire class saw you throwing spitballs at Inuzuka. Maybe if you'd been a little less conspicuous about it, you wouldn't have gotten caught."

"Why, you..."

Before another fight could break out in the middle of her bedroom, Hinata stepped between the two boys and interjected. She held out an open palm to each of their chests as if that could keep them apart. "Um, I th-think we should get started on the pr-project now."

Sasuke turned his head away from Naruto, silently acquiescing to her request. Baiting Naruto had only been a diversion, anyway. "Fine."

Naruto, perhaps remembering the previous day's events, agreed also with a reluctant "Hmph!" He crossed his arms in front of his chest and crumpled to the floor in a cross-legged position.

Sasuke followed soon after, but made sure to sit with one knee jutted in the air. He didn't want to seem like he had anything in common with the Naru-tard, even if it was just a common way of sitting. After draping an arm across the raised knee, he was settled.

Hinata followed after the two boys, taking yet another different position by folding her legs underneath her. She was probably forced to sit that way all the time for company, Sasuke figured, so maybe her legs wouldn't fall asleep.

"O-Okay...," Hinata began, stuttering a little more forcefully than she had before Naruto arrived. "M-Maybe the t-two of you should p-practice transforming into me since N-Naruto-kun is here n-now..."

"Hn," Sasuke agreed.

Naruto shrugged. "Whatever. How do you do the Transformation no Jutsu, anyway?"

Sasuke didn't even bother to hide his derisive snort at Naruto's expense. "You don't even know how to do a simple Transformation Jutsu?" he chided. Seeing Hinata flinch out of the corner of his eye, Sasuke added, "Hinata and I have at least got the basics down. Can you even do the hand signals?"

Rising up on one knee, Naruto lifted a threatening fist. "Of course I can! Any idiot can do that!"

Sasuke's eyes narrowed as he began to smirk. "Then show us."

Naruto was silent for a few seconds. "...I forgot."

"Right, you forgot," Sasuke jeered. "Or maybe you're just a bigger doofus than I originally thought."

"S-Sasuke-san, please stop," Hinata begged, reaching out a timid hand as if she were going to touch him. She held it back, however, and eventually withdrew it to her chest.

Sasuke cast his eyes to the side, that weird feeling of guilt curdling in his stomach again. "If he can't do the jutsu...," he muttered, trailing off.

Naruto, who had whipped out a crumpled worksheet of hand signals from his school bag, was ignoring the transaction in favor of practicing the jutsu. He had just formed the last seal when...POOF! A second, chubby Hinata appeared in the room.

Sasuke and the real Hinata stared at Naruto, identical droplets of sweat sliding down the side of their faces.

"...That sucks," was Sasuke's only comment.

"It - It's not that b-bad...," Hinata supplied, though her smile was pathetically weak. "He g-got my clothes and f-features right, at least."

With another "poof," Naruto returned to normal, frowning. "Damn! Let me try again."

He tried a total of five more times, none of the results any better than the first. One Hinata transformation looked as if she had not eaten for three years, another was lumpy in all the...wrong places, the third seemed to be missing a waist, the next one was fat on the top and skinny on the bottom, and the last – which probably disturbed Sasuke most of all – appeared to be a full nine months pregnant.

"...You suck," Sasuke supplied again as Naruto's familiar body reappeared.

Naruto dropped to the floor, panting with exertion, as he pointed a finger at Sasuke and challenged, "_You_ try it, then!"

"Fine," Sasuke accepted, climbing to his feet and assuming the Transformation no Jutsu stance. "I will."

A pop and a cloud of smoke later, another severely pregnant Hinata materialized in the room.

Naruto literally rolled on the floor with laughter, holding his stomach as if it pained him. "That – That's hilarious! The great Uchiha Sasuke – the ultra supreme _genius_ of Class Three – can't do it, either!"

Sasuke released the transformation to better kick Naruto while he still lay on th floor (the pregnant belly made it difficult to walk, much less avenge his injured pride). The dobe, surprisingly, leapt out of the way and onto his feet, choosing to stand behind Hinata as he taunted Sasuke from afar. It wasn't fair; he couldn't hit Naruto with Hinata in the way (something he suspected Naruto had slowly come to realize).

The real Hinata was still sitting on the floor, looking deathly pale. She was still making a valiant attempt at a smile, but it was more forced than ever. "G-Good try," she complimented. Apparently, the thought of being pregnant at eleven-years-old disturbed _her_ more than it disturbed Sasuke (and rightly so).

Folding his fingers together, Sasuke tried again. When another preggo-Hinata appeared, he realized that the image wasn't going to be so quick to leave his head.

Naruto renewed his laughter at Sasuke's expense, shouting, "At least I messed her up in different ways! You keep _knocking_ her up!"

Hinata blushed scarlet at the comment and, from the warm, light-headed feeling that Sasuke was experiencing, he thought he must be doing the same.

Naruto, if anything, laughed harder. "Okay, _now_ you look more like Hinata-chan!"

Sasuke waited until the blush on his face had abated before returning to his usual body. There was no reason to give anyone a _real_ image of him looking as if he had just found out he was going to be the father of Hinata's baby.

"Hyuuga, take your top off."

Naruto stopped laughing in an instant and Hinata looked at him as if he had just sprouted a pregnant belly in his usual Sasuke-form. "Wh-What?"

"Take your top off," Sasuke repeated, forgetting to analyze his words carefully. "I can't see anything with that jacket on."

Naruto moved to stand in front of Hinata, fists raised again. "You can't just say that to a girl!"

"Shut up, dobe," Sasuke snipped. "How can we transform into Hyuuga if we don't know what her body looks like?"

As his fisted hands loosened and lowered, Naruto gave Sasuke a quizzical look. "Huh?"

"All the problems with our transformations are with the body, right?" Sasuke drawled slowly, hoping to Hell that Naruto could keep up this time. "Well, our minds are obviously trying to fill in what we can't see by doing weird things. If we see what she _really _looks like under her coat, maybe we can get it right."

Naruto appeared to be thinking about it for awhile, looking between Sasuke and a horrified-looking Hinata as he did so. Turning fully back to Sasuke, he replied finally, "I guess that makes sense..."

"Okay, it's settled," Sasuke said, side-stepping Naruto to look directly at Hinata. "Hyuuga, take off the jacket."

"B-But Iruka-sensei said that w-we didn't have to t-transform anything beneath our cl-cl-clothes...," she argued, clenching the top of her jacket closed with a white-knuckled fist. She was shaking, Sasuke was slightly disturbed to see.

Sasuke kneeled down, arms draped over his knees, until he was eye-level with her. "You're wearing a shirt underneath, right?"

Hinata nodded.

"Then it's no big deal. It's not like we're telling you to get naked, or anything," he reasoned.

Hinata tilted her head a little to look over at Naruto who, Sasuke was mildly surprised to see, was looking undeniably curious. Apparently, he wanted to know what Hinata was trying so desperately to hide as much as Sasuke did (though maybe for different reasons, Sasuke thought with a small gulp).

Finding no help from her second partner, Hinata looked around the room as if hoping some invisible person would come to her rescue. When no such apparition spoke up, she reluctantly released her grip on her jacket and grabbed hold of her zipper. "Ok-kay..."

_Zzzzzzzzzip_!

With one quick pull – like ripping off a band-aid, Sasuke thought – the coat came open, revealing a little more of Hinata than previously available. She slipped her fingers underneath the fabric at the shoulder and shrugged it off, revealing her full body to her limited audience.

Her skin was bare around her neck and shoulders, but a high-collared black tank-top covered her modesty from the collarbone down. It extended past her waistline and molded over her hips, keeping even her bellybutton a closely-guarded secret.

Despite the adequate covering, however, it was apparent that Hinata was an early bloomer. Her breasts were easily twice the size of Sakura's (which were, admittedly, almost non-existent) and the length of her waist sloped inward and then back out at a sharp angle. Her shape wasn't quite reminiscent of an hourglass, but it was certainly more..._developed_ than Sasuke had previously imagined (not that he'd taken a lot of time to bother thinking about it, or anything).

Before Hinata's coat could even hit the bedroom floor, Sasuke felt the urge to cover her back up so that the dobe wouldn't be able to see. It didn't seem fair that he had to share her now that he knew what she had been needlessly hiding.

"Oi! Sasuke, get out of the way!" Naruto complained, placing his hands on Sasuke's shoulders to gain better leverage for a view. "I can't see anything!"

Sasuke roughly shoved Naruto away and remained where he was. There was no way he was going to willingly –

Hinata stood before he could stop her, revealing herself to Naruto, as well. All for the sake of the project, Sasuke was sure. "_Che_!"

Naruto wolf-whistled his appreciation, causing Hinata to flush a deeper scarlet and begin twiddling her fingers. She looked down and Sasuke, who was still kneeling on the floor, got a clear view of her feelings behind her eyes...

Standing up himself, Sasuke separated Hinata and Naruto bodily as his hands began to form seals again. With a poof and a sharp pop, an accurate Hinata took his place, looking physically perfect if not as adorably fidgety as the real thing.

With a smirk that was out of place on his borrowed features, Sasuke jeered, "Beat that, _dobe_."

* * *

**Authors Notes: **WAH! That chapter got long, didn't it? But I wanted to fit in some SasuHina-only moments (ie, the fateful walk home) as well as the funny/cute jutsu stuff (ie, the preggo-Hina and striptease). I still get the feeling that the middle is a little out of place (and also somewhat reminiscent of "Speak Up," actually), but I really want to leave it in. Let me know if you think it doesn't work and, if there are enough people who absolutely hate it, I'll take it out and save it for something else at a later date.

Oh, and the Preggo-Hinata was completely a whim that I came up with as I was writing. Funny? Yes? No...? I thought it made an...interesting image **n.n**; Also, some of the details that a few of you will undoubtedly mention will make sense later. Maybe not in this story, but later.

Btw, the lovely _**M-dono**_ has agreed to do doujinshi for this story! She's going to wait until the final chapter is posted (meaning I really gotta get working **n.n**; ), but go ahead and send her some love anyway!

Hope the chapter is up to standards. Un-beta'd.

_**. ( . Ms Videl Son . ) . **_

– _Love can be black and white. SasuHina._


	4. Part Four: Step Two

**Title: **Sexy no Jutsu  
**Disclaimer:** Nuh-uh.  
**Rating:** PG ( K+ ) – for pervy pubescent thoughts and brief mentions of nudity.  
**Spoilers:** How can I spoil anything that hasn't actually happened?

**Summary: **Part of the "Lifelong Love" series. "The purpose of this week's assignment," Iruka began, standing before his class of Cadets with a straight back and a smug expression. "Is to learn how to disguise yourself as the opposite sex." Implied SasuHinaNaru.

You can put away the torches and pitchforks now...

* * *

**Part Four: **Step Two

Sasuke narrowed his eyes at Naruto as the smoke cleared, thinking to himself how so very tired he was of seeing that stupid, grinning, _whiskered _(what kind of eleven-year-old had facial hair, anyway?) face. Once this stupid project was over, Sasuke fully intended to stay as far away from that face as absolutely possible. He would _never_ keep company with Uzumaki Naruto again.

"I'm sorry, Sasuke-san...," Naruto apologized, slumped over in a half-bow as he fidgeted with his fingers. "I'm tr-trying..."

Sasuke snorted derisively at Naruto's pathetic excuses. How could it be more difficult to transform into one person than another? If he had _really_ been trying, then they could have finished up practice hours ago.

Barely clinging to the last bit of his patience, Sasuke addressed Naruto through gritted teeth. "Maybe if you'd stop thinking about Naru-tard and start focusing on me, you could do it."

Naruto sniffled and started blinking rapidly. "I'm s-sorry, Sasuke-san..."

As the first tear dripped from the end of Naruto's whiskers, Sasuke felt the frustration at him melt away and a different sort of anxiety altogether take its place. He hadn't meant to make him cry, or anything...

Leaning backwards with his hands pillowing head, Sasuke did his best to pretend that he was relaxed and aloof as he ever was. He teetered Hinata's chair on its hind legs, bracing the back against the edge of her desk to prevent himself from falling completely over, and forced himself to address his project partner in the monotone he usually used. "Just try it again, Hyuuga."

From his position, it was easy to watch the Hinata-turned-Naruto from the corner of his eye without her being any the wiser. He watched her as she nodded and wiped her face with Naruto's sleeve, replying, "O-Okay..."

Now that Hinata had stopped crying, Sasuke felt compelled to add, "And, this time, try to keep your thoughts free of the dobe."

Sasuke shifted his eyes a little more in Hinata's direction to better gauge her reaction. To his utter surprise, she was actually smiling a little and nodding more fervently at him. "I'll try," she promised, molding Naruto's fingers into the much practiced transformation jutsu hand signals.

In another puff of white-ish smoke, the figure of Hyuuga Hinata reappeared in Naruto's place, doing her best not to look discouraged. She formed the seals with her fingers again, her eyes squeezed shut as she fought to concentrate, and cried out, "Transformation no Jutsu!"

With a faint pop, Naruto was once again in Sasuke's presence, looking for all the world like he was about to cry (again).

The disappointment was so great within Sasuke that his chair slipped against the desk, almost causing him to fall over and onto the floor. He managed to catch himself at the last moment, however, and planted all four legs of the chair on Hinata's bedroom floor as if he had planned to do so all along.

Though Sasuke knew that Hinata (probably) couldn't help it, seeing her so incapable of transforming into him was beyond irksome. Even before Naruto had showed up for their meeting the day before Hinata had been having trouble forming a perfect Sasuke clone. One of her worst attempts had given him blonde hair, blue eyes and, worst of all, _breasts_. She had looked like a female Naruto wearing Uchiha clothes and Sasuke's patented haircut.

What made the ordeal disturbing, however, was the fact that she had been able to create a perfect copy of Naruto after only two or three tries. Even her botched attempts had been pretty good; one Naruto had retained Hinata's Hyuuga eyes and the hair had been a little too fine, the next had been perfect save for the lack of whiskers, and in her last failed attempt she had accidentally forgotten one of the insignia on his windbreaker.

After about half an hour of trial and error, however, her transformation of Naruto had been perfect right down to the last stitch on that butt-ugly jacket of his. Sasuke figured that the ease of her Naruto transformation probably lay in how often she thought about him. It was obvious that she had a little crush on the dobe, which, Sasuke knew, meant that she was probably thinking of him and sighing wistfully about it most of her daily life.

Naruto himself, of course, had felt the need to prance about and laugh at Sasuke's expense when it became apparent that Hinata could only successfully clone one of her partners. After about ten minutes of tolerating Naruto's gloating face, Sasuke had suggested that the dobe prance on home and stop distracting the people who were actually there to work. This "suggestion" had been punctuated by a non-verbal threat that accomplished two agendas at once; one, to get rid of Naruto and, two, keeping Hinata the unwitting, happily-ignorant witness of a very serious promise of painful death.

Sasuke had been mildly surprised that Naruto had gotten the hint at all, but supposed an entire lifetime of menacing glares had made the dobe an expert on who really meant to hurt him and who only wanted to. In the end, Sasuke didn't much care how or why Naruto had picked up on his murderous intent, but was glad to have him gone all the same.

A full hour of practice after Naruto's hasty departure, however, hadn't improved Hinata's transformation. Even without the dobe in the room her mind was, apparently, still as focused as ever on his stupid face, his ugly clothes, and his ridiculous, unruly, vile –

"I'm s-sorry, Sasuke-san...," Hinata apologized again, maintaining Naruto's appearance as she slumped her shoulders. She was biting her lip and looking at her feet as if she were tempted to cry again, but held back her tears with an admirable amount of self-control. Something she had no doubt been forced to perfect as a public figurehead of the Hyuuga clan.

Though Sasuke had to admit to being annoyed (to himself, at least), there was no profit in making the girl cry. "Che, whatever," he said, resuming his former lounging position in the desk chair (while wisely keeping all four legs planted firmly on the carpet). "It's not like you can help it."

Oddly, this reassurance seemed to make Hinata feel worse. She bit down hard on her lip, staining her front teeth a pinkish-red, and began to blink rapidly. She didn't reply verbally, but nodded in agreement.

There was another pop that signified the fall of her guise and another pale cloud of smoke engulfed her body and spread throughout the room. Hinata's usual figure, sans her coat, materialized before Sasuke looking tired and frustrated with herself. Her face was a bit lighter than its natural pallor, undoubtedly due to the steady drain of chakra that the Transformation no Jutsu had demanded of her over the past few hours. All the more reason to throw in the towel, so to speak, for the afternoon.

"Maybe we should quit for the day," Sasuke suggested, stretching his arms and back out until he heard his joints pop. Sitting in Hinata's desk chair for hours on end was more physically demanding than combat training at the academy. "You can just do the covert-op part of the assignment as Naru-tard."

Hinata, apparently still unwilling to speak, bobbed her head again in affirmation. On the second of three sequential nods, however, her face slackened into an unresponsive stare and the last splotches of color left in her cheeks was absorbed in the pervasive paleness that had overcome her healthy constitution. As she raised slackened fingers to touch her forehead, her knees buckled and her body began a rapid descent to the floor.

Hinata's proximity to her writing desk, however, made it impossible for her fall straight to the ground without collecting a concussion along the way (Newton's first law 'n whatnot) ( 1 ). Luckily for the swooning Hyuuga heiress, Sasuke's chest made the perfect barrier between herself and impending fatality. With his body thrust protectively between her skull and the deadly mahogany corners, Hinata was spared the embarrassing (and incredibly painful) experience of almost certain head injury.

Sasuke, of course, wasn't as lucky as his rescued partner. He managed to avoid splitting his cranium open against one of the many sharp edges of the desk, but he was almost certain that he'd twisted his knee when he'd valiantly thrown himself out of his seat to shield Hinata. The chair itself had tipped over with him, tangled as it was between his legs, crushing Sasuke between the two matching pieces of furniture and his project partner simultaneously. He was also pretty sure that the swelling lump on the back of his head would have to be looked at by a Medic-nin, but sincerely doubted that it was serious enough to warrant a hospital stay.

"S-Sasuke-san!"

Shaking his head from side to side to clear away the mild case of double-vision he was experiencing, Sasuke forced himself to focus on Hinata. Considering that he had taken most of the impact (as multiple parts of his body were currently scolding him for) he didn't expect to find her missing an eye or anything but asked after her health anyway. "You okay?" he queried, grunting as her body shifted away from his.

Obviously fine, Hinata was sitting up looking even more conscious than before the fall. The adrenaline had hit her bloodstream, apparently. "I'm so sorry! Are you hurt? Should I call the family doctor? I'll go get him right – "

"I'm fine," Sasuke said, grunting as he sat up. Hinata moved out of his way, seemingly afraid of touching him again lest she break anything else. "Really," Sasuke reassured her, climbing to his feet. After walking around for a few paces, he realized that his knee was fine, just a little sore. Good.

"Are you sure...?" Hinata asked as she followed him about the room, searching his body for injuries. She even activated her Byakugan which, presumably, could detect internal damages.

Sasuke did a couple of flips in the center of her room to prove his good health. Even though the landing hurt a little (okay, a _lot_) because of his knee, he forced himself to be the picture of perfect health. The pain in his body slowly ebbed away leaving behind nothing but a hint of soreness in his knee, head and a couple other random muscles. Quite honestly, he was fine.

"I think we should call it a day, though," Sasuke suggested, leaning down to collect his school bag and notes scattered across the floor. "You're obviously too tired to do the jutsu anymore."

Hinata approached him and looked as if she were ready to cry again. "Really, I'm so s-sorr – "

"It was my fault," Sasuke interjected, placing his palm over her mouth. "I should've realized how much of your chakra was depleted and stopped you from doing the jutsu again. I'm sorry."

With his hand over her mouth, Hinata looked kind of funny with her eyes widening like that. Sasuke couldn't help but smirk a little at her.

He pulled his hand away from Hinata's mouth and reminded her, "I'll see you tomorrow. Noon in front of Ichiraku's Ramen stand, okay?"

"O-Okay...," Hinata agreed, nodding.

Sasuke, insisting that he didn't need an escort to the front door (he'd been t the Hyuuga compound plenty of times, after all, and it never really changed), told Hinata to go to bed and get a good night's sleep; she'd need all the energy she could get if she was going to transform into the dobe the next day.

"'Night," Sasuke called as he walked down the long hallway towards the front part of the house, waving the back of his hand at her as he went.

"Goodnight," he heard Hinata call after him.

Sasuke's smirk widened into a full grin; even with Naruto around, the following day promised to be a pretty good one.

— — —

Fidgeting restlessly with her fingers, Hinata stuttered, "A-Are you s-sure this is alright, Sasuke-san...?" Her face was bright red as she repeated her next suggestion for the fiftieth time; "I c-could practice a little m-more and – "

"It's fine," Sasuke returned, growing quite irritated with how, since the incident in her room yesterday, Hinata had failed to look at his face even once. Was physical contact with a boy really _that_ bad? Or was it Sasuke, specifically, that disgusted her? "Iruka said that you only had to transform into one of us anyway. Stop worrying so much."

"B-But – "

Turning bodily away from his female partner, Sasuke quickly changed the subject with a loud, angry huff. "Where the hell is that dobe, anyway? Even _he_ can't possibly get detention on a Saturday..."

Sasuke and Hinata were standing next to Ichirauku's Ramen – as per Naruto's request of a quick lunch before commencing with the project – waiting for their third, habitually late partner to show his stupid, whiskered face. Sasuke was willing to bet his entire family's combined fortune – of which there was quite a bit – that there was no one else in the village that was as consistently tardy as Naru-tard. He'd be willing to stake _twice_ that amount on the impossibility that anyone else could come up with such worthless excuses for his lateness, either.

"I'm sure he's on his way...," Hinata said in her usual soft whisper. "He probably wanted to eat something first."

"We're meeting at a ramen shop," Sasuke reminded her sourly. "Eating is the entire point of meeting here."

Hinata, not the type to give up blind hope for a crush, opened her mouth to defend him a second time; "Well, I'm sure he's – "

"I'M HERE!"

Sasuke inclined his head towards the direction from which the shout originated and glowered at the approaching figure, who was drawing closer at a quick-paced jog. "You're late, Naru-tard. We've been waiting for half an hour."

Naruto skidded to a halt right in front of Hinata, teetering precariously on his toes as he fought to keep his balance by flailing his arms. "Woah!" he cried, flapping his arms harder as he began to overbalance and tilt forward. Hinata reached out to steady him, but found it impossible to do so while he was moving around in such a way.

Reaching out with a flat palm, Sasuke planted it in the center of Naruto's chest and pushed him backwards so that the blonde social outcast landed hard on his rump. Hinata saved (yet again), Sasuke's duty was fulfilled.

"Ow...," Naruto complained, rubbing his sore backside. He made no further comment, however, leaving Sasuke to believe that, for once, Naruto recognized his downfall as his own stupid fault.

"Can we get this started now?" Sasuke demanded, folding his arms across his chest as Hinata leaned down to help the dobe up. The Uchiha prodigy's eyes narrowed slightly when, for a split second, he thought he observed Naruto sneaking a peek down Hinata's jacket.

When fully upright and at a perfect vantage point for lecherous gawking, however, Naruto's eyes remained front and center, giving Sasuke no leave to suspect any perverted wrongdoing. Hinata, of course, had noticed nothing out of the ordinary and released Naruto's arm with shy reluctance once he was balanced properly on his own two feet.

"What are we doing, again?" Naruto asked, scratching his head and gazing at Sasuke with that squinty-eyed, dumbfounded look that everyone was so familiar with.

Having given up on Naruto ever knowing what was going on early in the project, Sasuke answered without his usual annoyed fanfare of huffing and scowling. Whipping out their assignment sheet, Sasuke began quoting directly off the page. "_You will walk around Konoha as your partner to determine if you are able to properly imitate their gender-specific qualities. As you do this, your partner will be utilizing the concealment and spying techniques learned in Unit Three to both track your progress and keep a diary of it. You will take turns transforming and recording and the diaries will be_ _turned in to me for credit_," Sasuke finished, folding up the paper and stuffing it back into his pocket where it belonged. "Which means that we're going to take turns transforming into one another and taking notes. Got it?"

"I know what it means, you bastard," Naruto replied, spitting his tongue out at Sasuke. In the background, Sasuke was appalled to find that Hinata was giggling at the transaction.

Though he was sure that he was at least slightly red in the cheeks, Sasuke continued on with his assessment of the situation as if nothing about his demeanor had altered in the slightest. "Since we're already at one of your usual haunts, Naru-tard, I think Hinata should go first since she's going to transform into you. You better have brought paper and pencil."

"What?" Naruto exclaimed, jaw dropping open as if this were the most objectionable suggestion ever. "What about lunch first? You said we were gonna eat!"

"We were," Sasuke replied, sneering in vindictive triumph. "But you wasted all of our extra time by being late so now we're gonna skip it."

"But – But – "

"I-I'll bring you s-some ramen, N-Naruto-kun," Hinata promised, placing a trembling hand on Naruto's arm with a watery, placating smile. "Pork, r-right?"

Sniffling, Naruto gazed at Hinata as if she were presenting him with a pot of gold, prestigious award or both. Throwing his arms around her entire upper body, Naruto pulled Hinata to him in a big hug as Sasuke watched, inwardly horrified at the spectacle. "I _love you_, Hinata-chan!" he proclaimed, rubbing his tanned cheek against her cherry-tinted one.

Just as Sasuke was about to step forward and rip his two partners apart, Hinata pushed Naruto away from her with both hands, her face flaming red. Apparently, the thrill of having Naruto confess his love to her as he held her in his arms was a bit too much for the Hyuuga heiress to handle all at once. "I'll g-go g-g-get it f-for y-you," she stammered, pulling her flattened palms away from Naruto's chest and severing the last bit of contact between them.

Forming the seals perfectly (if a little shakily) with her fingers, Hinata transformed into a perfect replica of Naruto without difficulty. Her face was still pretty red, but it was hidden better beneath Naruto's tan, making it seem as if she'd simply gotten a little too much sun on her nose and the apples of her cheeks.

Without another trembling word, Hinata spun around and marched into Ichiraku's Ramen shop, completely neglecting to ask Sasuke if she could bring him anything (which was rare). Perhaps because of this Sasuke bestowed the dumbfounded Naruto with an extra-scathing look as Hinata lifted the flaps above Ichiraku's entrance.

"Welcome to Ichiraku's Ramen!"

—

**Attempt One: **Ladies First

Hinata entered the ramen shop feeling distinctly ill and not at all hungry. In fact, the overpowering smell of broth and skillet-fried meat was exacerbating her condition rather than alleviating it. All-in-all, Hinata wanted to retreat from her assignment and go spend some time basking in her own company beneath her purple-flowered sheets.

Hearing words of love from Naruto had been what she'd always wanted, but the spectacle that had occurred outside was bittersweet for the Hyuuga heiress. While she wanted to delude herself that he was serious, Hinata fully realized that Naruto had spouted those words on an excited whim and, despite how she wanted to take them otherwise, knew that she couldn't. Naruto loved Sakura – that was perfectly clear – and, if Hinata hadn't been the single person in their class willing to take Naruto on as a partner, he wouldn't even be sparing her a glance today. Instead, he'd probably be off splashing pretty colors on the faces of the stony-faced Hokages, eating gigantic bowlfuls of ramen or following around the aforementioned pink-haired kunoichi and begging for a date. If he'd had the choice, Hinata knew, Naruto wouldn't be spending the day with her.

Hinata recognized Naruto's profession of love for what it was – nothing. She knew that the chances of Naruto ever loving her _that way _were so slim that it was probably more likely for her to end up with _Sasuke_, of all people, before even getting a single peck on the cheek from her dream guy.

So much for a simple assignment...

"Naruto!" cried the man behind the counter, presumably the owner. Hinata jumped as his loud voice intruded upon her gloomy thoughts, bringing her back to reality with a humiliating (and slightly painful) thud. "What'll it be today?"

Before she could think to stop herself, Hinata bent low in a prim bow and greeted the merchant formally. "G-Good afternoon, Ichiraku-san."

When she rose out of her bow, the man was looking at her as if she'd asked him for okonomiyaki ( 2 ) instead of his signature ramen. "Are you feeling alright, Naruto?"

Blushing, Hinata realized her mistake. Though she was tempted to bow again – this time in reverent, humbled apology – the Hyuuga heiress mimicked one of Naruto's patented gestures instead. Leaning heavily on one foot and crossing it over with the other, Hinata pillowed the back of her head in her palms, conjoined by the fingers, and forced a loud laugh. "I was just k-kidding!" she exclaimed, opening her mouth wide again to emit another awkward guffaw.

Ichiraku still didn't seem convinced, but let the subject drop. Perhaps he had settled on the idea that Naruto's milk had gone bad (again), or maybe he just didn't care as long as Naruto's money was good. "Take a seat," the merchant said with a bit of uneasy cheer, waving offhandedly at a stool in the center of the counter.

Judging by the seat that molded perfectly to Hinata's borrowed butt cheeks, this was obviously Naruto's favorite seat when enjoying Ichiraku's ramen. Hinata scanned the walls to read the little wooden plaques that advertised the establishment's food items, trying to determine what – if anything – sounded appetizing. It wasn't that she thought Naruto had poor taste – definitely not! Never! – it was just that the Hyuuga compound never served anything that the elders considered "common," like ramen or gyouza ( 3 ), which she noticed she could get either fried or steamed.

Though she thought that the steamed gyouza would probably do for an entree, Hinata scanned the rest of the wall for an alternative meal that might sound better. On a plaque on the far side of the restaurant from herself (which was a few yards wide, maximum), Hinata's attention was caught by large, multi-colored letters that proclaimed:

"**Try the gut-busting, extra-large, meat-packed SUPER DELUXE ICHIRAKU RAMEN! Beef, chicken, pork and shrimp all in one monstrously-large bowl! Only the minimal amount of noodles and broth required**."

Hinata's earlier queasiness returned to her and she held a hand to her stomach to soothe

the restless caterpillars that were squirming around in her stomach and attempting to turn themselves into butterflies. Hinata had never heard of something so unappetizingly awful! She was certain that, if such a bowl of animal by-product were ever set down in front of her, she would be physically sick on the spot.

"Here you go, Naruto-kun," said Ichiraku's one-and-only waitress in the most simperingly-sweet voice Hinata had ever heard. Returning her gaze to its previous position, she spied the waitress – or at least her bosom – directly in front of her. Apparently, the gods had hand-selected this young lady to be particularly...gifted and Hinata, knowing full-well that Naruto spent almost all of his spare time at this establishment, felt even worse about herself (and her meager "offerings") than ever.

After the few awed seconds spent jealously admiring "Chidori's" (or so her nametag labeled her) large...teeth, Hinata belatedly realized that she had been gifted with the largest, most disgusting bowl of ramen she had ever seen before in her life ( 4 ). In fact, it was the same bowl of ramen that she had only minutes before declared unhealthy for her constitution. "Um...I d-didn't order this," Hinata squeaked, eyes widening at how high the pile of meat in her bowl really was.

"I know," Chidori replied, leaning over to lean on the counter so that her "teeth" nearly spilled out of the top of her barely-appropriate kimono. "It's your usual, isn't it?"

As a wave of nausea began to overwhelm her, Hinata kept her mouth clamped firmly shut and dared not respond. She gulped once, forcing the army of butterflies that had successfully hatched from their cocoons back down to the hardly impenetrable fortress that was her stomach.

"Are you feeling okay, Naruto-kun?" Chidori asked, taking a step backwards and away from Hinata.

After waiting a moment to make sure that her breakfast wasn't about to leap out of her mouth, Hinata answered, "F-Fine."

"Ichiraku-san!" Chidori yelled to her manager, tugging forcefully on his sleeve. Her expression belayed a horrifying disgust that implied if Hinata were sick, she would be, too. Upon not getting an immediate response, Chidori tugged again, harder this time. "_Ichiraku-san!_"

Ichiraku, who had been speaking to another customer, answered with an annoyed growl. "_What_, Chii-Chii?" ( 5 )

"I think Naruto-kun's going to be sick!" she replied, ducking behind Ichiraku as Hinata placed a hand to her mouth and lurched forward. Nothing came out, but Hinata (and, most likely, all the onlookers, too) realized that it was only a matter of time before it did.

Leaping from the stool, Hinata dashed outside before the inevitable caused Ichiraku to close down his establishment for the rest of the day.

—

_Poof!_

Once outside and around the corner of the building, Hinata released the contents of her stomach onto the grass. When there was no more left to come out, she dry-heaved on all-fours until both her stomach and chest hurt.

After barely a minute of this, Hinata felt warm, soothing hands on her back and a person at her side. "Hyuuga, are you okay?"

Hinata opened her eyes and stared blankly at the mess she'd made, realizing glumly that none of it looked even remotely like butterflies. "I'm feeling better, Sasuke-san...," she replied honestly, leaning back to sit on her haunches. Sasuke's arm was still around her shoulders, keeping her steady.

Sasuke's other hand disappeared from her shoulder for a minute, doing something off to the side. A couple seconds later it reappeared offering her a perfectly clean handkerchief. "Here."

Hinata turned to look at him finally to tell him that she couldn't possibly ruin his handkerchief, that she'd be perfectly fine, but he cut off this thought before it could even be vocalized.

"_Here_," he said again, motioning for her to take the proffered piece of cloth. Hinata did so without any other presumption of argument and delicately dabbed the last vestiges of vomit from the corners of her mouth.

"Thank you," Hinata said, smiling to the best of her current ability (which wasn't much).

"Geeze," another voice interrupted, whistling at a low, amazed pitch. "You don't look like you eat much, Hinata-chan, but you sure had a lot in there!"

Hinata blushed as she recognized Naruto's voice and remembered what had occurred before entering Ichiraku's. If she'd had any half-digested food left in her stomach, Hinata might have thrown up again.

"Shut up, dobe," Sasuke replied with a snarl. "Your disgusting eating habits made are what made her sick!"

"Hey, it's not my fault that she's got a weak stomach! If she couldn't handle it – !"

"No one could handle the slop that you put into your body! You're such a – !"

"STOP IT!" Hinata screamed, clamping her palms over her ears to block out the sound of her teammate's bickering. What was _really _making her sick, what was _really _causing her stomach to churn and her heart to beat much too fast, was the animosity between the two boys. She had no idea why they hated each other so much, but she was tired of being stuck in the middle of it! "Stop fighting! Why are you _always fighting_?"

Wonderful, now she was going to cry.

At a complete loss for what to do, Hinata leaned into the closest source of warmth available to her – which happened to be Sasuke – to hide her tears and seek a bit of involuntary comfort. Normally she would be ashamed of causing such an imposition, but she knew that Sasuke wouldn't push her away – he was always close by like that.

As Sasuke's hand began awkwardly stroking her back and Naruto's voice began to coo placating words at her, – "C'mon, Hinata-chan. Don't cry...we were just kidding! C'mon, don't cry..." – Hinata began to calm down a little. After a couple minutes, Hinata didn't know why she was still clinging to Sasuke's side since the tears had abated long before, but she was unwilling to let go.

With a couple more sniffles, Hinata (somewhat reluctantly) pulled herself away and wiped up her tears with the handkerchief she'd borrowed from Sasuke. Despite the splotches of vomit here or there, it smelled kind of good so she allowed her face to wallow in it for a few extra seconds. "S-Sorry...," she said after awhile, lifting her face up to look at her teammates. She knew she had to be all puffy and gross-looking, but figured that it didn't really matter anymore – Sasuke wouldn't care and Naruto didn't love her, so what was the point? "W-What's next?"

"Maybe we should take you home," Sasuke suggested, calling Hinata's attention to himself. She turned her eyes only to look at him and received a strange sight in return.

Sasuke, who was apparently straining to keep some sort of expression off his face, was grimacing at her. Well, not grimacing, exactly; one of his eyebrows was raised while the other one was pulled low over his eye and his mouth was...twisted. There wasn't any other way to describe it, just twisted. He looked so funny that Hinata couldn't help but laugh at him.

Sasuke's expression changed again, making him look even funnier, and Hinata's laughter was renewed. He changed it once more and Hinata, caught up in her fit of laughter, fell backwards and out of her crouched position to sit flat on the ground. If Hinata hadn't known better, she would have thought that Sasuke was doing it on purpose!

"I'll b-be fine, Sasuke-san!" Hinata promised between laughs. "What's next?"

—

**Attempt Two:** Second is the Worst

Naruto, for the life of him, couldn't figure out what was going on between that jerk Sasuke and Hinata. He almost (_almost_) thought that they might be dating, but then reconsidered when he remembered how much Sasuke hated girls. After all, when a guy gives a speech that entails nothing but the sentence "Girls are annoying," one kinda figures that he's not interested in going out with one.

Oh, crap. What if he was batting for the other team?

Naruto shuddered at the thought and scooched further away from Sasuke in their little "Make Hinata-chan Feel Better" circle. No sense taking chances.

Sasuke gave him a weird look, but said nothing and refocused his attention on Hinata. "Are you sure you don't want me to take you home?"

Hinata, displaying the first all-natural smile Naruto had ever seen on her face, shook her head no and replied, "I'm fine, Sasuke-san. Let's continue working on the project." Weird, she wasn't stuttering, either.

"Fine, let's go somewhere else though. Maybe the park?" Sasuke suggested, flashing a look at Naruto that implied "agree or die."

Though Naruto had an urge to be as defiant as always, he felt bad enough for Hinata to play along. Even if she was a weirdo, she was a nice weirdo who deserved a bit of fresh air after being violently sick. "Yeah, that sounds good."

Hinata nodded in acquiescence and started to stand up. Sasuke, way ahead of her as always, got to his feet first and leaned down to help her up. "I'm fine, Sasuke-san, really," Hinata said, attempting to move around under her own power. After a few steps to prove that she was, indeed, "fine," Sasuke agreed to let her walk on her own but continued to watch her like a mother hen.

"It's your turn next, dobe," Sasuke said, flashing Naruto a severe look.

After Hinata's little freak-out, Naruto decided that arguing with Sasuke was possibly detrimental to her health and, therefore, his. For a gay guy, Sasuke sure paid a lot of attention to Hinata, which didn't make much sense to Naruto. Oh, well, better her than him. "Whatever," Naruto replied, standing up at last and stuffing his hands in his pockets.

On the way to the park, Naruto noticed even more of Sasuke's weird behavior towards Hinata. He was standing pretty close to her, but every time she happened to look his direction he would leap another few inches away as if she'd caught him doing something naughty (or perhaps dirty; did gay guys look down girl's shirts? Didn't that kinda defeat the point of being gay?). The bastard also looked like he was making a huge effort to keep him away, as if Naruto were some sort of enemy hell-bent on doing...something to Hinata. It was just _too_ weird!

They stopped to rest on a bench next to this quaint little man-made pond thing – complete with cute baby duckies and senior citizens to feed them – so that Hinata wouldn't get sick from so much walking around. Geeze, Sasuke was such a prissy, girly worrier! The jerk said something about this corner of the park being kinda secluded and perfect for transforming without drawing attention or whatever, but only after Naruto had called him a pansy-man worrywart. This whole let's-not-fight-for-the-sake-of-Hinata-chan thing was starting to have some benefits (ie, fewer bruises, cuts and incidences of head trauma)!

Anyway, Naruto kind of half-listened while Sasuke reminded him about his mission for the project – blah, blah, blah, blah – and then demanded that he go ahead and transform. So Naruto stood before his two teammates and, concentrating hard on the image of Hinata he'd received the night before (great-looking knockers 'n all), performed the proper hand signals with his fingers.

_Poof!_

The next instant, he was a great representation of Hinata!

"You idiot!" Sasuke bellowed, bopping Naruto on the back of his head with a closed fist. After making sure his head was shielded from further attacks, Naruto looked up to find a slightly red-faced Sasuke glowering at him.

"_What_?" Naruto demanded defensively, rubbing at the bump that was swelling on his skull. No concussion this time, but _damn_ did that hurt! So much for "no more fighting."

Sasuke, looking as if he wanted nothing more than to hit Naruto again, sneered at him. "You did the transformation wrong, dobe!"

Naruto felt the short hair at the back of his head, prodded Hinata's round little face and even checked the back of his hands to make sure they were girly enough. There was nothing wrong with his transformation! "I did not!"

"Then what do you call...," Sasuke paused, closing his eyes, and pointed to Naruto's chest. "..._those_!"

After blinking with confusion a couple of times, Naruto dipped his head down to look at whatever offending feature Sasuke was pointing to. Oh, _those_. "Oops," Naruto said, rubbing a sheepish hand against the back of his head as he grinned at his teammates. "I guess they're a little big, huh?"

Hinata, her face hidden in her hands, didn't seem capable of response. Sasuke sneered and replied, quite sarcastically, "You think?"

Reaching up to take one in each hand, Naruto squeezed and jiggled his obscenely-large breasts in an experimental manner. They seemed alright to him, even if they weren't quite...Hinata-ish. Then again, judging by what he'd seen the night before, Hinata might have a set just like them (or possibly even bigger!) in a few years or so. Still, on an eleven-year-old's body, Naruto supposed that they were a _little_ out-of-place...

_Poof!_

Naruto changed back to his usual form with the intention of starting all over. "Okay, let's try this again," he said, forming the hand signals perfectly.

_Poof!_

Big-boobied Hinata, at your...erm...service.

Dodging another punch from Sasuke, Naruto made the smart choice of ducking behind Hinata. Obviously, the asshole had some sense of chivalry because Naruto had never seen him turn violent against _her_. Hell, he'd hardly even _raised his voice _to her!

"C'mon, jerkface!" Naruto called out, gesturing for peace behind the darkly-blushing Hinata. "It was an accident! You kept knocking her up yesterday, remember?"

Sasuke reached behind Hinata in a mad grab for Naruto, but the latter managed to evade the former's hands again. Sasuke made another violent grope for Naruto from Hinata's other side, but was again unsuccessful. "Hold still, dobe!"

"Stop!" Hinata shouted, looking straight at Sasuke. The Uchiha prodigy listened immediately and withdrew his hands, though he still looked as if he wanted nothing more than to rip Naruto limb-from-limb. From the safety behind Hinata's back, Naruto made a face and a rude gesture at Sasuke, knowing full well that the Uchiha could do nothing about it. "W-What if I loan Naruto-kun my j-jacket? Th-That might help..."

Without waiting for any response, Hinata grabbed the zipper on her jacket and pulled it open, revealing a bit more skin than she had shown even the day before. This tanktop was black like the last, but one of those...those...linguini-strap things. The kind that showed a decent amount of cleavage, but managed to keep just about everything else covered. From Naruto's position over Hinata's shoulder, he had a perfect view of paradise...

Then again, from his position _as_ an extra-busty Hinata, he had an even better view.

Either way, Sasuke looked like he was about to leap over Hinata and kill him. Man, gay dudes just didn't make any sense...kinda like girls.

After receiving Hinata's jacket, Naruto immediately donned it and covered up his newly found assets. This seemed to placate Sasuke, so that made everyone happy.

"Well, I'm off to go do Hinata-chan things!" Naruto proclaimed, saluting to his two teammates. An instant later, he was gone.

—

After about half an hour of leaping through trees to get as far away from Sasuke and his gayness as possible, Naruto was beginning to get hot. No, _literally_ hot; the figurative was kind of a given based on his temporary cup size.

Anyway, once Naruto felt that he was a decent distance away from the homicidal-maniac-trapped-in-a-pre-pubescent-male's-body, he stopped his fevered run through the trees and jumped down onto one of the more widely-used hiking trails, figuring that witnesses might be helpful if Sasuke ever caught up with him.

He waved to a family picnicking in a clearing not far to his left and, expecting them to shun him like everyone else did, received a pleasant surprise when they waved back. Unzipping the jacket Hinata had loaned him to cover both of their modesties, he pulled it off and threw it over his shoulder as he began to walk down the trail, whistling and strutting in a very un-Hinata-ish way.

After a few yards, Naruto heard a rustling in the trees somewhere above and behind him. Looking up, he saw a flash of color bouncing from limb to limb and catching up to him with great speed. "Shit!" Naruto cursed, throwing down Hinata's jacket to make a quick getaway.

Naruto dashed down the trail at top-speed, listening to Sasuke's approach from what seemed like every direction. Every time Naruto took a left, Sasuke was right there. Whenever he took a right, Naruto realized that he hadn't left Sasuke behind. No matter what, it felt like the asshole was right on top of him (and that _really_ grossed him out)!

"Man, how do girls run with these things, anyway?" Naruto panted, clutching at his chest to keep his overly-inflated mammary glands from bouncing all over the place. "Being a girl _sucks_!"

Finally, Naruto achieved a feint and, instead of turning right at the fork as he made it seem he was going to, he bounced off a tree and took the left path instead. He turned his head to look behind him and, finding no darkly-colored blurs following him, whooped in triumph. He had finally beaten that damned Sasuke at something! Finally outsmarted him! Finally showed him who was really – !

Catching a root with his toe, Naruto fell face forward into the dirt. Because of his momentum, the impact was particularly hard, causing Naruto to see little stars and birdies flying around his head. "Woah...," he muttered, dirt stirring around his head as he exhaled. "Pretty...sparkly..."

"Hyuuga!" shouted a loud, familiar voice. Oh, damn; not _him_. "Hyuuga! Are you okay?"

"Mnm...ph...," was all that Naruto could muster. He considered thinking it weird that Sasuke was calling him "Hyuuga," but decided that he had better things to worry about (like his ribs; despite all the extra cushioning, they were aching pretty bad).

Naruto felt himself lifted up off the ground and leaned backwards against a solid, guy-smelling body. A set of arms was looped around his waist and (creepiest of all) a nose was practically _nuzzling_ his forehead.

"Hinata...," Sasuke's voice whispered in his ear. "Do you need to go to the hospital?"

Reality struck Naruto like a megaton of Choji's; Sasuke was _holding_ him, _nuzzling _him and _whispering affectionate concerns in his ear_! Holy fuck...what they said about guys picking on the ones they like most was (disturbingly) true!

"Um...S-Sasuke-san...?"

Naruto felt Sasuke's head move away from his and, illness probably still written clearly across his face, he followed suit. The real Hinata, standing there in her cleavage-y tanktop, was staring at the cuddling boys with a face so pale that it was almost translucent. For the first time ever, Naruto realized that her eyes weren't white, they were kinda purplish; the only reason he noticed was because, with her pallor such an unhealthy color, they stood out against the starkness of her face.

It was kind of a weird thing to be worried about, considering the circumstances, but Naruto would later reminisce on how focusing on Hinata's eyes was better than thinking about the situation at hand.

—

**Attempt Three: **Aborted

When Sasuke returned to his empty apartment early that afternoon – having decided to call the game on account of intense humiliation – he flopped down onto the floor beside the door immediately. He felt drained of all feeling (even disgust) and incapable of coherent thought. Thanks to Naruto abandoning Hinata's jacket somewhere in the woods, Sasuke had mistaken _him_ for _her_ and...and...well, self-preservation would eventually block the memory out entirely, so Sasuke decided not to dwell on it further.

Sasuke stayed in that same spot all night, ignoring his ringing phone and intentionally neglecting to turn on his lights. Hinata left message after concerned message on his machine, but the Uchiha prodigy had no intention of calling her back – ever.

Sasuke hoped that, after all three of them had a good night's sleep, they'd all wake up and pretend it had been an awful, disturbing, very bad dream that should never be mentioned to anyone.

Now, if only Sasuke could get to sleep...

* * *

**Footnotes:**

( 1 ) Newton's first law of motion states that, "An object will remain at rest, or continue to move at a constant velocity, unless a net force acts upon it." This basically means that an object (or person) will keep moving until something forces it to stop. Ie, if you fall, you'll only stop when you hit the floor (or something else on the way down).

( 2 ) Okonomiyaki – commonly referred to as "Japanese pizza" or "Japanese omlette." It's basically a circle of batter with a tasty sauce and varied toppings. Shrimp, pork and noodles are popular flavors, I hear.

( 3 ) Gyouza – dumplings or "pot stickers." Often filled with chicken, pork or seafood and veggies. As mentioned above, they can be either pan-fried or steamed, depending on preference. Really tasty with a nice side of soy sauce to dip them in. They're often served as side dishes at casual restaurants and bars in Japan.

( 4 ) EDIT: Oops, I guess I should've double-checked my sources **n.n**; "Chidori" actually means something like "a thousand birds," as explained by Kakashi in the series. I got it mixed up with "Cho," which really DOES mean "butterfly." My bad! Thanks so much to Hali-chan, who brought the mistake to my attention. If I mess anything else up, please let me know! I'd rather fix it than look stupid (for an extended period of time, anyway).

( 5 ) If any of you out there are fans of DBZ, you might already be aware that Chidori's nickname "Chii-Chii" is a reference to her breasts. I couldn't resist **n.n**

—

**Authors Notes:** That's right! You get three different POVs in this chapter **n.n** Different, huh? And extra long! Then again, it should be considering how long I made y'all wait for it...**n.n**;

So sorry about the long wait, guys. College can be a bitch when it comes to demands on free time. Okay, so it was mostly the working-every-weekend thing from October through mid-November that _really_ kept me from updating, but both sources played a role in the tardiness of this chapter. Y'know that part in the middle of this chapter about being habitually late and having stupid excuses? I'm sure y'all can relate to Sasuke's annoyance over it **n.n**;

Oh, and Sasuke's not going to complete his part of the assignment. I can't see him going through with it now, do you?

Next chapter you get to find out why this story is entitled "Sexy no Jutsu" **n.n**

Don't forget to drop me a line and let me know if you're still interested!

If I didn't have time to write, do you think I'd have time to beta? Un-beta'd.

**. ( . Ms Videl Son . ) . **


	5. Part Five: Step Three

**Title: **Sexy no Jutsu  
**Disclaimer:** Nuh-uh.  
**Rating:** PG ( K+ ) – for pervy pubescent thoughts and brief mentions of nudity.  
**Spoilers:** How can I spoil anything that hasn't actually happened?

**Summary: **Part of the "Lifelong Love" series. "The purpose of this week's assignment," Iruka began, standing before his class of Cadets with a straight back and a smug expression. "Is to learn how to disguise yourself as the opposite sex." Implied SasuHinaNaru.

And NOW...*drumroll*...you get to learn the significance of the title ('bout time, right?).

Btw, back to Sasuke's POV.

**Part Five:** Step Three

Sasuke dragged his feet to school the following Monday as he contemplated declaring himself sick. It wouldn't really be a lie, he rationalized; the insomnia he had been experiencing since the...accident on Saturday surely prevented him from being in top form. If nothing else, Sasuke was sure that he looked like hell, which should be all the proof needed for the "sick as all get out" excuse.

Either that or his fangirls would take it upon themselves to nurse him back to health and _really_ give him a reason to stay home.

The only thing that drove Sasuke forward towards academia was his obligation to the project or, more precisely, his teammate. Knowing how petrified Hinata was of standing in front of the class made Sasuke feel – for lack of any other proper, more cool-and-aloof-sounding term – _sympathy_ for her.

Oh, and he didn't want Naruto to muck up his chances of a good grade. There was that, too.

All-in-All, Sasuke couldn't afford to skip this day, no matter how much he felt he deserved it. Therefore, he trudged on through the school gates looking more dark and brooding than was his usual standard (which, rest assured, is at least _hypothetically_ possible).

—

As he entered the classroom, Sasuke dimly realized that fangirls and male classmates alike were stepping aside to allow him clear passage to his desk. No one offered him morning greetings, proclamations of undying love or even offers to bear his children, struck dumb as they seemed to be by his foul mood. '_Good_,' was Sasuke's only impression of this phenomenon.

The cloud of disgruntlement hovered over him as he ascended the stairs and hunted for his assigned seat on autopilot.

"M-Morning, Sasuke-kun...," Sakura greeted him, waving meekly from a relatively safe distance. Her blonde counterpart stood slightly behind her as if she were ready to sacrifice the pink-haired girl at any moment and make an escape.

Ino moved her mouth as if she had some form of lockjaw, but ultimately no words came out. Giving up, she forced a smile and copied Sakura's half-hearted wave.

Sasuke glared in return and both girls wilted.

He shouldered his most ardent fans out of his path and successfully made it to his row. Sasuke paused at the landing and looked ahead along his plotted course. His hands began to tremble slightly in his pockets.

"G-Good morning, Sasuke-san...," Hinata called to him, punctuating her salutations with a smile. It wasn't false, but it was certainly weak.

Lowering his gaze to the desk in front of him, Sasuke muttered, "Morning."

He stood there awkwardly for a few extended moments, discreetly wiping his moist palms against the fabric of his pants. He felt like an idiot.

Her face appeared out of seemingly nowhere, looking sheepish and embarrassed. "Are you...ok-kay, Sasuke-san?"

Sasuke took one long, quick step away from her, the apples of his cheeks warming uncomfortably. "Fine. Why shouldn't I be?"

It was slightly reassuring to see that Hinata was blushing, too, but this was hardly a rare occurrence. She was also fidgeting with her fingers again, he noticed. "I-It's j-just...I know that N-Naruto-kun was a little...um...," the red in her cheeks brightened as she pondered her next words. "F-forward the other d-day, and – "

Nudging Hinata out of the way as he had the other girls, Sasuke plowed on to his seat. "It was nothing," he snipped, slumping down into his chair with a huff. He crossed his arms in front of his chest and hoped she would take a hint.

True to her nature, she dropped the subject and sat down quietly next to him, eyes averted. Her ability to leave well enough alone, Sasuke decided, was one of her best qualities.

Just barely on time (for once), Naruto dashed through the classroom door seconds before the first bell of the day rang.

"YES!" he shouted, pumping his fists in the air. "Made it!"

Whacking the dobe upside the head with a rolled up stack of papers, Iruka ordered him to his seat; "Just sit down, Naruto!"

"Ow...," Naruto grumbled, rubbing his wound with an offended hand. "I thought you weren't allowed to hit students."

"Well, you thought wrong," Iruka replied, giving him a light kick in the backside for good measure. "Get to your seat!"

Naruto climbed the classroom stairs just as Sasuke had, muttering and cursing about the unfairness of life. He plopped down in the empty seat on Hinata's other side and, when she offered him a morning greeting, he muttered an unenthusiastic reply.

Sasuke had never wanted to hit someone more. (Other than the obvious, of course.)

"Alright, alright...," Iruka called out over the din of chattering students. "Let's get started. Do we have any volunteers to go up first?"

All of a sudden, the classroom was quiet. No more girlish giggling, no rustling of paper, no creaking of fifty-year-old, government-issued chairs. Every preteen person in the room was caught like a deer in the headlights of a vehicle called "public speaking."

A comically large drop of sweat trickled down the side of Iruka's deadpan face before eventually saying, "Fine...I'll call on someone randomly. Sakura-chan? Would you and Kiba-kun please take the floor?"

Sakura looked startled and terrified, but managed a smile. Gulping, she agreed, "Sure...We'd love to."

"Speak for yourself..," muttered Kiba, glaring over the shelter of his folded arms at his pink-haired partner.

— — —

"That was...," Iruka began, trailing off as he searched for just the right descriptor. "A nice try," he finally settled on.

The corpulent version of Ino disappeared in a puff of white smoke, leaving Choji standing in her place. Unabashed in the intense glare of his blue-eyed partner, he reached into his bag of chips and continued to chow down to his heart's content.

The presentations had all been _awful_, in Sasuke's generous opinion. If he'd wanted to be perfectly honest, however, he'd have called them _dismal_. A few (such as Sakura) had managed to grasp the basic principals behind the transformation jutsu, but none had seemed even _remotely_ plausible as copies of their partners. As Kiba, Sakura had actually winked at Sasuke. Ino, as an effeminate version of Chouji, had blown him a kiss from behind Iruka's back.

In the end, even "dismal" was kind, Sasuke decided.

"Okay, Team Three, you're up next," Iruka announced, shifting his eyes to look directly at Sasuke.

Great...just what he'd been waiting for all weekend.

Naruto was the first of their group to respond to the beckoning and slumped down the staircase by himself, hands shoved in his pockets and face firmly set in a grumpy expression.

With a defeated sigh, Sasuke pushed his chair back and got to his feet. Inclining his head toward Hinata, he said, "C'mon."

Hinata nodded and silently followed, trailing behind him like a baby chick. She was growing pale again, but hardly shaking at all; maybe having the support of teammates emboldened the heiress.

The mismatched trio stopped at the base of the staircase – Hinata wisely acting as buffer between the two unruly boys – and turned to the waiting audience of disinterested adolescents. Sasuke figured that no one (not even Hinata) should feel nervous in front of this crowd; it was obvious none of them were paying the slightest bit of attention to what was going on before them.

"Are you ready?" Iruka asked, drawing the group's attention to him. Almost simultaneously, the three teammates nodded. "Okay, then. Sasuke-kun, do you mind going first?"

Thanks to his gloomy mood, the Uchiha prodigy didn't even feel like arguing. He could do the jutsu in his sleep – Hell, he could do it in _someone else's_ sleep if he really had to – and the sooner this stupid presentation was over with, the better.

Stepping forward so that he was separated from his partners, Sasuke assumed the well-practiced position required for the transformation no jutsu. With lightning-quick finger movements, the spell was complete and his body was engulfed in a fluffy cloud of sulfurous smoke. When it cleared, an entirely different form was standing in his position.

"Very good, Sasuke-kun!" Iruka praised, just as he'd been anticipating. His transformations were always flawless, after all. "I think you were a little too...enthusiastic with some of the anatomy, though."

When the class erupted into giggles, Sasuke scowled and looked down. There was nothing wrong with his –

'_Ah, crap_,' he thought to himself, fighting off the warm blush that had suddenly erupted in his cheeks. His penchant for copying the dobe's mistakes seemed to have cropped up again, causing him to distort Hinata's prepubescent body in a familiar way.

"Nice one," Naruto snickered from Hinata's other side, leering pointedly at the hefty endowments Sasuke had conjured on his own chest. Extra large breasts bulged beneath a thinly-strapped black tank top, giving everyone in the stadium desks an excellent view of his female partner's future figure.

To his immediate left, he could see an unrestrained blush on the real Hinata, but chose to ignore it. He dropped the transformation quickly, allowing it to dissolve in another cloudy poof.

"It's not perfect, but I give your effort an A minus," Iruka said, jotting down a notation on his clipboard. He seemed somewhat relieved that the jutsu hadn't been worse and eager to move on. "Hinata-chan?" He waited for the Hyuuga heiress to turn her eyes to him before continuing, "You're up next."

Sasuke stepped back into their line as Hinata moved forward; they exchanged glances as they passed each other. She looked absolutely petrified, the green-ish tint returning to her skin, and he almost worried that she was about to be sick again. The Uchiha prodigy gave her an assuring nod, prodding her silently to do her best. Hinata didn't return the gesture, but looked a little more determined when she stopped before the first row of desks.

Hinata wove her fingers together expertly, forming her spell with perfect precision, and was quickly engulfed in a cottony cloud of wispy mist. It didn't smell as bad as Sasuke's; to the contrary, it was reminiscent of the soothing scents of lavender and green tea.

The Uchiha's eyes widened in unadulterated surprise when he finally caught a glimpse of the figure within the sweet-smelling steam. It was...him. A perfect transformation of his own dark form, complete with a very life-like scowl on his face.

'_She...She did it._'

"Well _done_, Hinata-chan!" Iruka praised loudly, clapping his hands together vigorously. The psudo-Sasuke blushed prettily and the corners of his mouth turned upwards in a bashful smile, ruining the initial effect of Hinata's flawless transformation. "You copied Sasuke's appearance _perfectly_! And I find no fault with your body language or expression...an A plus if ever I saw one. Excellent job."

"Th-Thank you," the psudo-Sasuke said, forcing his face into a stoic mask. The attractive flush lingered in the apples of his cheeks.

The real Sasuke couldn't believe his onyx eyes. The last time they'd practiced together, Hinata had only been able to copy the dobe; how much had she trained since he'd last seen her to achieve such a flawless copy? She'd even managed to counterfeit the little details that really counted, such as the strawberry birthmark on the back of his neck and the thin white scar on his left wrist. She hadn't missed a single thing that he could name and, needless to say, he was pretty familiar with his own body. He almost suspected – even though it couldn't possibly be true – that her rendition of him was even better than her version of Naruto.

As Sasuke stared at the back of his mirror image, it disappeared in the now-familiar swirl of purple-ish white smoke. When the fragrant fog lifted, a shy Hinata remained, looking a bit pale but invigorated. She stepped back into line next to Sasuke, accidentally brushing his arm as she slid into place at his side.

The Uchiha squirmed a little after the contact, but felt his spirits suddenly lifted. He traded glances with Hinata, who smiled warily at him, and Sasuke's ego inflated. Fighting the urge to grin too broadly (the fangirls were watching, after all), he settled into an overwhelming feeling of peace that had eluded him all weekend.

"Naruto?" Iruka called next, shifting his gaze to the awed blond boy furthest away from him. The dobe blinked at him, clearly confused. "Your transformation...?"

"Oh! Right," Naruto said, stumbling forward so that he was the new center of attention. After performing the requisite hand motions, he, too, disappeared behind a veil of exhaust (which smelled an awful lot like pork ramen to Sasuke) while his new body took form.

All the good feelings that Hinata had procured within him withered and died quicker than they had been inspired. They were replaced by the intense emotions of hate, disgust and homicidal rage.

"SEXY NO JUTSU!" Naruto shouted, once the smoky cloud lifted, posing the nude female body he now possessed in a lewd manner. He had clearly decided to be more...creative with his transformation and only vaguely resembled the person he was supposed to be copying.

Oh, it was Hinata alright, but certainly not a faithful rendition; _this_ Hinata was several years older, a couple feet taller and multiple cup sizes bigger than the original. Her hair had been lengthened so that it fell past her waist, despite being pulled back in two high pigtails. The only features that seemed to suggest that the Hyuuga heiress had been his inspiration for this...counterfeit were the eyes (a familiar milky white) and the hair (which, despite being longer, was definitely the right color and texture).

While Sasuke stood transfixed and absolutely horrified, the psudo-Hinata blew kisses to the loudly cheering group of preteens out in the audience. The boys were whistling and cat-calling to the transformation while the girls hissed and booed. Another battle of the sexes was brewing and Naruto was in the middle of it...

Without waiting for the mob to form, Sasuke pounced, tackling the psudo-Hinata to the ground in a violent fury. He could hear some of his classmates cheering him on, others crying out in fear, but only one single voice shone through the miasma of sound –

"S-SASUKE-SAN! _NO_!"

---

"Unacceptable!" Iruka bellowed again, his hands flailing wildly above his head as he addressed the two delinquent students before him. The blond culprit was cowed, his head lowered in shame, but the darker of the two seemed unimpressed by his teacher's display with his arms folded and his scowl set. "Such behavior – it's so – you can't – AUGH! There aren't even any words for what the two of you did!"

"It was the dobe's fault," said the darker boy, pointedly looking away from his partner in crime.

Immediately incensed by the accusation, the blond leapt to his feet, face flushed in anger, and shouted, "_You're_ the one who attacked _me_! How the hell is this my fault!"

"Sasuke! Naruto!" the educator barked, prompting the latter of the two to lower his fists and resume his seat. The chair wobbled unsteadily when the boy dropped into it, almost threatening to pitch him to the ground. Naruto ignored it and crossed his arms, directing his gaze in the opposite direction from Sasuke. The two were strangely inaccurate mirror images of one another. "I've had enough of this bickering. The two of you need to grow up and get over your differences."

"Che."

"Hmph."

Iruka buried his fisted hands in his hair, trembling with the urge to rip it all out by its roots. "Sasuke, you're suspended for a month."

Finally, he got a reaction out of the stoic prodigy. "_What_?" Saskue yelled, whipping his head around to look directly at Iruka. His eyes were narrowed in unsettling hatred. "Why should I get suspension? If that dobe hadn't made such a disgusting transformation, I would never have – "

"Hey!" Naruto interjected, turning his head towards the fight, too. "It's not my fault that you're a complete psycho with a gay crush on me!"

"Do you want to die right here, moron? Because that can happen."

"I'd like to see you try, asshole!"

"There will be no 'trying,' only 'succeeding.'"

"Want to take this outside?"

"Only if you're too chickenshit to do it right he – "

"_Knock it off!_" Iruka screeched, raising his voice to a pitch he wasn't previously aware was a possibility. These boys were bound and determined to kill him by brain aneurism or heart attack, though he wasn't sure which. "Sasuke, you're suspended for a month, period. Attacking Naruto – or any other student, for that matter – is strictly against the rules of this institution. I don't care what your motivations were, this decision is _final_," he said, turning to the blond culprit now. "Naruto, your transformation was both inaccurate and inappropriate for a classroom setting. You're lucky I didn't suspend you, too! I'm sorely tempted to kick the both of you out of here, permanently, just to get you out of my sight! Have some respect for this school, each other and yourselves, would you?"

The two boys chanced wary glances at one another before returning their eyes to Iruka's enraged face. For once, they both seemed to be listening and absorbing what was being said rather than focusing on their own petty problems. "Naruto, you're in detention every day until Sasuke's suspension is lifted."

"But – "

"That's _final_," Iruka interrupted, sending a glare in the kyuubi vessel's direction that forced him to fall silent. "And I want the _both of you_ to apologize to Hinata. She's the real victim in all of this."

"I can't – "

"Is there a sign on my forehead that says 'I give a damn about your excuses'?" the educator interjected once again, this time directing his ire at Sasuke. The prodigy clenched his jaw and shook his head. "That's because I don't. You'll both apologize to her – to her _face_, not in some half-assed note – and that's that. Do you both understand me?"

"Yes, Sensei," they both intoned dully.

"Good. She's waiting outside."

---

When the trio exited the otherwise vacant classroom, they were met by Hinata, who seemed to have been pacing the corridor during the entirety of their heated exchange inside. "Oh!" she said, turning to face them. "I-Is everything ok-kay now?"

Iruka smiled at the shy girl, the sympathy he had for her practically radiating from his body. For such a sweet child to be caught in the middle of an infantile argument between feuding adolescent boys...it was just wrong. "Hinata, Naruto and Sasuke have something they'd like to say to you."

When nothing happened immediately, Iruka sent a glare in the direction of the two delinquents. They both shifted uncomfortably where they stood.

Naruto was spurred into motion first, stepping forward to face Hinata awkwardly. The girl's cheeks immediately flushed with color and she redirected her gaze to the floor. "I'm sorry, Hinata-chan...," the kyuubi vessel said, glancing back at his teacher as if hoping his duty was over. Iruka motioned for him to turn around and elaborate. "I...I didn't mean to embarrass you. I was just trying to be funny."

"I-It's okay, Naruto-kun," Hinata assured him without looking up. She was smiling at the straps on her sandals.

"So...we're okay, then?" Naruto continued, tilting his head so that he could get a good look at her face.

Hinata evaded his eyes by pivoting her head in the opposite direction, the burning redness in her cheeks more pronounced than ever. "Y-Yes..."

"Great!" Naruto exclaimed, thumping her hard on the shoulder with the palm of his left hand. The girl fell forward with an 'eep,' but regained her balance before she could descend completely to the floor.

Iruka's attention was stolen away from Naruto's second apology – "Ahh! I'm so sorry, Hinata-chan! I didn't mean to hit so hard..." – by a low, throaty growl. When he turned around, he half-expected to see Kiba standing there (despite the fact that he'd sent all the other students home early), but there was only Sasuke. The Uchiha prodigy was paying him no mind, however; instead, he was glaring hatefully at the scene that was unfolding between Naruto and Hinata.

Iruka glanced at Naruto and Hinata – then back to Sasuke – Naruto and Hinata – Sasuke again –

– And it suddenly made sense.

"N-Naruto," Iruka beckoned, waving the boy over before his hand once again came into contact with Hinata's person. There was no need for more bloodshed today; the underpaid educator had had his fill already.

Luckily, Naruto paused the offending appendage in mid-air and turned to face his teacher without actually touching her. "What?"

"I think that's enough apology for Hinata," the educator said, beckoning Naruto to his side. "Let Sasuke have his turn."

Naruto looked from Iruka – to Sasuke – to Hinata – but didn't seem to catch on. "Um...okay."

Even if the boy didn't realize it, his dutiful, caring teacher had just saved him from having his spleen ripped out of his eye sockets. "Sasuke," Iruka said, addressing the darker boy with a nod. "Apologize to Hinata."

Without moving from his spot, Sasuke muttered, "Sorry."

Iruka was tempted to force the boy to do it over (sincerely this time), but Hinata beat him to the chase by forgiving him immediately; "I-It's okay," she said, peeking up at the prodigy through her thick indigo bangs. "You were just def-fending me. Thank you."

"Che."

Iruka looked from Sasuke (who was clearly blushing, even if his stoic expression hadn't changed a whit) to Hinata, searching for signs of reciprocated feelings. She seemed a little more comfortable addressing Sasuke over Naruto, but that was the most promising thing in the Uchiha's favor he could find.

Damn...it was going to be a _long_ school year.

"Well, I think that about sums it up," Iruka proclaimed, clapping his shaking hands together. "Sasuke, I'll see you in a month. Naruto, I'll see you everyday after school _for_ a month, and Hinata, I'll see you tomorrow."

With that, all of his pupils were dismissed, each one of them clearly baffled.

— — —

**Authors Notes: **ALL DONE!!!

I've got plenty of excuses for why this wasn't finished back in '07, all of them lame. I won't bore you with the details; suffice to say that the underlying problem was writer's block and a sudden distaste for writing.

Why update now, you ask? Well, I intend to write a sequel to this story for my DateMe entry this month (March 2010; SasuHina/"Darkness and Light") and thought it would be better if this fic were complete before starting on that one. Don't get too excited, though; it'll be a ThreeShot, at longest. Perhaps two if I can make it so.

Btw, I believe that, due to unfortunate circumstances (my lack of updates being amongst them), the lovely M-dono has decided to abandon the doujinshi project (mentioned in a previous chapter) for this story. However, we still have Riceesquared's lovely version of "Kiss Away the Pain" (which is officially complete now!) and perhaps other projects coming up in the near future...we shall see.

I hope someone out there is still reading this...lolz. If not, oh well. I brought this on myself...

**UPDATE (10 March 2010)** – I've hacked off the original ending (not to worry, I've included it in the lineup as an "alternate ending" after the next chapter), fixed a bit of grammatical stuff, and basically just added some polish. I did write a bit onto the end of this chapter, though. You might want to read that before continuing on to the next portion.

I hope the new ending to this chapter wasn't too sloppy...I like the exchange, but I'm worried it seems rushed. Tell me what you think.

Un-beta'd.

_**. ( . Ms Videl Son . ) .**_

– _Love can be black and white. SasuHina._


	6. Part Six: Final Grades

**Title: **Sexy no Jutsu  
**Disclaimer:** Nuh-uh.  
**Rating:** PG ( K+ ) – for pervy pubescent thoughts and brief mentions of nudity.  
**Spoilers:** How can I spoil anything that hasn't actually happened?

**Summary: **Part of the "Lifelong Love" series. "The purpose of this week's assignment," Iruka began, standing before his class of Cadets with a straight back and a smug expression. "Is to learn how to disguise yourself as the opposite sex." Implied SasuHinaNaru.

Dedicated to my readers/watchers who embody the virtue of patience...

--- --- ---

**Part Six:** Final Grades

**Naruto**

Naruto grimaced at the big, fat F Iruka had written on his grading sheet as he mulled over the unfairness of it all. His transformation no jutsu had been perfect! Albeit a little more...creative than most. Why should he be penalized for adding a bit of flourish to his presentation?

"_You're lucky I didn't suspend you, too!_" Iruka's voice chided inside the kyuubi vessel's head. Because, of course, it was Naruto's fault that the Uchiha was a complete (gay) psycho with a big (gay) crush on him...hmph.

"Stupid Sasuke-teme!" Naruto spat, crumpling the red-marked paper within his shaking fist. If he'd just held his (gay) self back, none of this would have ever happened! But, no, he just _had _to try to dry hump him in the middle of class...some people just shouldn't be allowed out in public.

The kyuubi vessel sighed and slumped his shoulders when he reached the doorstep of his teeny-tiny apartment and began fishing around in his pocket for the key. He'd just go inside and have a nice, hot cup of instant ramen. That would make everything better...

"A-Ano..."

Naruto jumped about three feet off the ground when the small, stuttering voice interrupted his bitter inner monologue. Spinning in mid-air, he landed in the perfect position to spot Hinata, the only girl he knew that didn't spit at him on sight, lurking in the bushes by his front door. Man, she could sure be creepy sometimes...

"Hi-Hinata-chan," the kyuubi vessel greeted, gulping. Was she there to extract her weird, freaky revenge, or something? He'd already apologized for that whole mess last week..."What're you doing here?" '_And how the hell do you know where I live?_'

"Um...," the heiress said, staring bashfully at her twiddling fingers. Her face was a little pink and she was shaking slightly, but she seemed determined to say something. "S-Since we...um...th-the grades...and..."

Naruto cocked his head to the side and stared at her through squinted eyes. What was she getting at? If she was trying to tell him off for his transformation, she really sucked at it. "What about them...?"

Hinata closed her eyes and breathed deeply. Having apparently settled her nerves, she resumed, "S-Since Sasuke-san is st-still on suspension, I th-thought that maybe we c-c-could...um...b-bring him h-his grade? T-Together."

...She was kidding, right?

"NO!" Naruto ejaculated, feeling an angry heat rise into his face. If he never saw that (gay) bastard again, it would suit him just fine. Why the hell would he go out of his way to deliver school work to someone who'd gotten him a failing grade?

Hinata flinched and took a step back. The color in her face was much more pronounced now. "B-B-But – "

"Uh-uh!" Naruto interrupted, scrambling to unlock his front door with shaking hands. He dropped his keys and bent down to retrieve them before continuing, "There is _no way_ I'm doing that stupid bastard any favors! It's _his_ fault that I failed in the first place!"

"But – !"

"_Forget it_!" the kyuubi vessel shouted, a snarl rising in his throat. Both of his (gay) partners could go rot in Hell! Why didn't anyone ever consider his feelings about anything?

"N-Naruto-kun – "

With his door finally open he made a quick escape into his lonely abode, leaving the stammering girl outside in the bushes. Before she could even make an attempt to stop him, he slammed it closed, erecting a sturdy barrier between them. Just for good measure, he locked it, too.

"Good riddance...," he muttered, already feeling the butterflies of guilt fluttering in the pit of his stomach. Let them both be (gay) together...he was staying out of it.

---

**Hinata**

Hinata did her very best to hold back the tears clinging to her eyelashes, but it was a loosing battle. Naruto had been so (for lack of better term) mean...it was incredibly unlike him. Sure, she was a stuttering freak, but he'd never said a single unkind word to her in all the years she'd known him. That was one of the things she liked best about him...he was always so nice.

It was probably her fault in the first place. How could she have even thought to impose upon his time like that? Especially when she knew how much he disliked (again, for lack of better term) Sasuke...it was perfectly understandable that he wouldn't want to go with her to deliver the Uchiha's homework and project grade.

Hinata had known all along that Naruto was going to refuse her, but she was just so desperate...she really didn't want to see Sasuke all by herself. The thought of being alone with him, especially so soon after their previous week's disastrous presentation, made her tremble down to her core...

But, she decided, wiping the back of her hand across her dampened eyes, there was no escaping it now. Naruto had been her only chance...she didn't really have any friends at school and all of her family members would be busy. She really didn't want to disturb any of the Hyuuga servants with this little errand; they had all kinds of important work to be doing, too. She would just have to steel her wobbly nerves and go through with it.

Turning away from Naruto's securely locked door, Hinata began her perilous journey.

---

When the Hyuuga heiress arrived on Sasuke's side of town, it was already close to dusk. The sun still lingered on the horizon, but it was fidgety and ready to slink away at any moment. She would have to make this visit quick; dinner would be on the table soon at home and the elders frowned upon tardiness. Besides, she really didn't want to dawdle here, anyway...

Hinata rapped her fist against the outside of Sasuke's door and waited.

...waited...

…waited some more...

...and then knocked again, a little harder this time. She listened carefully, but no one stirred within.

'_Maybe he's not home..._,' she thought, almost hopefully. She felt bad about wishing she could get out of her obligation (strictly speaking, Sasuke was her friend, possibly the only one she really had), but couldn't fight off the relief that welled within her when the door remained firmly closed in her face.

Dismissing the idea of peeking inside with the aid of her Byakugan (it was a family rule not to intrude on other people's privacy), Hinata knelt down beside the WELCOME mat and placed the folder of schoolwork on the ground. After a bit of maneuvering, it slipped easily through the crack at the bottom and into the apartment.

There, mission complete.

The heiress stood up and bowed to the closed door. "I'll see you soon, Sasuke-san," she said. He wasn't there to listen, but she felt it was the polite thing to end her visit with either way.

Turning around, Hinata raced down the stairs, headed for home with a guilty eagerness.

---

**Sasuke**

The guilt writhed in Sasuke's stomach like a nest of hungry snakes. He'd deliberately ignored Hinata when she'd knocked on his door, hoping fervently that she'd give up soon and go away.

Of course, now that she had, Sasuke regretted his decision to leave her out on the doorstep. Not only did he feel guilty (for lack of better term) for pretending to be out when she'd called on him, but now he was all alone...

...again.

Sasuke harumphed and pulled his comforter over his head, encasing himself in a stifling cocoon of fabric and fluff. The feverishness he'd felt off and on for the past week was upon him again, riling up the associated symptoms as well. The squirmy coiling in his stomach...the lightheaded dizziness...the wildly palpitating heart. He was seriously considering seeking the opinion of a healer.

Of course, he couldn't tell any medial professional that every attack of his illness was preceded by thoughts of Hinata...mentions of Hinata...and now visits from Hinata. He was quite sure that she was some kind of allergen, but he wasn't equally positive that a healer would see it that way. Instead, he would just have to endeavor to stay away – body _and_ mind – from her. That was the only solution.

Luckily for him, he had an entire month to prepare himself for any inevitable encounters with the Hyuuga heiress in the outside world. He'd use his suspension constructively by forcing himself to eradicate her from his thoughts. Once he could scour the girl out of his mind, he was sure he'd feel better. It was a simple solution that couldn't fail...

...right?

In the meantime, he would just have to pretend that he wasn't at home if she decided to call on him again. And he wouldn't leave the house. Nor would he answer the phone. Sasuke was on lock-down for the foreseeable future. And that was the way it had to be.

--- --- ---

**Author's Notes:** I didn't originally intend to write a sixth chapter, but I figure y'all deserve something extra for all the time I made you wait. Besides, every good story deserves an epilogue...**n.n**

Seriously now, this is the end. Of this story, at least...keep an eye on my profile for further "Lifelong Love" updates!

**UPDATE (10 March 2010)** – If you read the edition of "Part Five: Step Three" that was posted on March 7th, you might want to re-read it. I've added a new ending that I think better flows with the story and stays more within the parameters of characterization. The original ending to that chapter is still available, however; just click the "next chapter" button and you'll get right to it **n.n**

Un-beta'd.

_**. ( . Ms Videl Son . ) .**_

– _Love can be black and white. SasuHina_


	7. Alternate Ending

**Title: **Sexy no Jutsu  
**Disclaimer:** Nuh-uh.  
**Rating:** PG ( K+ ) – for pervy pubescent thoughts and brief mentions of nudity.  
**Spoilers:** How can I spoil anything that hasn't actually happened?

**Summary: **Part of the "Lifelong Love" series. "The purpose of this week's assignment," Iruka began, standing before his class of Cadets with a straight back and a smug expression. "Is to learn how to disguise yourself as the opposite sex." Implied SasuHinaNaru.

Bonus tracks, even!

Btw, this occurs on the day of the presentation. Ie, immediately after the sexy no jutsu debacle.

--- --- ---

**Alternate Ending**

Suspended for a month, Sasuke groused inwardly. All because of that stupid dobe...'_And my overwhelming urge to kill him_,' he admitted to no one but himself.

The Uchiha prodigy leaned his head back until it rested against his front door, brooding quietly about his crappy day. His life had been taking a downward spiral lately and all because of some _girl_. A simpering, pathetic little princess who couldn't (or wouldn't) even fight her own battles! Someone he had to look after and worry about and fret over...

Well, no more of that crap. From henceforth, Sasuke would look after himself and no one else. Number one. Nombre un. Numero uno. Nummer ein...

_Knock, knock, knock..._

Sasuke started and leapt away from the door when the soft tapping intruded upon his thoughts. A visitor? He rarely got visitors anymore...people (even the fangirls) tended to leave him alone when he was in his teeny-tiny apartment, mostly out of fear that he would violently toss them out on their rump if disturbed.

_Knock, knock, knock..._

Whoever it was, they were damned persistent. Well, he would just have to try harder to ignore them, that was all. Slumping back against the door with his eyes closed, Sasuke settled in to listen to the rhythmic thumping until the idiot on the other side decided to give up and go home.

_Knock, knock, knock...!_

"Sasuke-san?" a muffled, yet familiar, voice called from behind the wooden barrier. Sasuke pulled his eyelids apart quickly, his heart suddenly launched into his throat where it collided with his Adam's apple. "Sasuke-san? Are - Are you in there...?"

Before she could knock again, Sasuke leapt into a standing position and opened the door (not too hastily, he hoped). Right there, standing on his threshold, was the root of his problems. "Hyuuga," he greeted sourly.

The heiress gulped and lowered her raised fist. "I – I came to s-see if you were alright," she explained, dropping her gaze to the nearly pristine "WELCOME" mat beneath her feet. It looked as if no one had used it. Ever.

"I'm fine," Sasuke intoned dully, using his own body as a barrier between her and the inside of his domain. He intended to end...whatever this was out here on his doorstep. "What do you want?"

"Oh...just...um...I – I – I – "

The Uchiha glared icily at the bumbling girl, well aware of what he was doing to her speech impediment. "Well? Spit it out."

Hinata took in a deep breath and seemed to steady herself. "I – I'm sorry you got suspended," she finally said, releasing the air in a whoosh of relief.

Sasuke stared at her incredulously. "Why?"

"Be-Because it's my fault," Hinata replied, beginning to twiddle her fingers nervously. "You were...um...defending me. I'm s-sorry."

Upon realizing that his stony cover was blown, Sasuke began to panic. As a result, his mood turned darker and his words harsher. "What makes you think that?" he spat at her.

Hinata barely flinched; maybe she was getting a little too used to his temperament. "Because...you were, weren't you?" She lifted her eyes to look straight into his, still poking her fingers together fretfully.

"No," the Uchiha denied, moving to close the door in her face.

Hinata, for once, was too fast for him. Placing a palm flat against the door, she held it open. As Sasuke put up little resistance against her, the attempt at keeping it open was successful. "You've been very...very kind to me," the heiress said, rushing out her words as a new pink stain spread across her face. "I – I know you don't like Naruto-kun's jokes and that you like to protect people, even when they don't know that they need it..."

'_Not everyone..._,' he thought to himself, knowing that he'd never say so to _her_. "And?"

"And...And I just wanted to say...," she trailed off, looking up at him almost desperately. "Thank you."

"I – You – " Sasuke stopped dead in the middle of what he'd intended to be a coherent sentence, absolutely baffled by what he was hearing. "What?"

"Thank you," Hinata reiterated, attempting a wary smile.

"You – " the Uchiha paused again, his heart beating so erratically in his throat that it was difficult to speak. He gulped it down and, before it could come back up, he quickly mumbled a, "You're welcome," and slammed the door shut. _Hard_.

Once the barrier was back in place between himself and the babbling Hyuuga heiress, Sasuke locked it and secured it with the chain. He then resumed his former position and slumped against the door, sliding down it until his rump hit the dirty tatami mat below.

"Stupid girls...," he muttered, slapping a hand to his forehead. It was hot to the touch – burning, really – and his clammy palm soothed the feverish skin. Nothing so simple helped the fluttering nausea that had erupted in his stomach, however; he closed his eyes and fought off the urge to vomit butterflies right in his entryway.

Deciding that he was definitely sick now, Sasuke hauled himself up and stumbled into his bedroom, intent on sleeping it off until his suspension was over. Depending on how he felt at the end of it, maybe he wouldn't go back at all...

--- --- ---

**Author's Notes:** Some of y'all probably recognize this as the ending I originally posted for this story, and you're right. I liked it (and it's in-your-face drama, lolz), but thought it was a little too OOC...thus, I made the executive decision to cut it out of the story flow and introduce it as an "alternate ending." If you prefer it, feel free to consider this the way the story really goes; it doesn't matter much in the long run of this series. All you really have to understand is that this whole episode ends awkwardly (which I hope comes across in both conclusions).

Btw, be sure to tell me which ending you preferred **n.n** As stated above, I'm partial to both, I just think the "official" conclusion fits better with the flow of the fic and the characters' personalities. But that's me.

Self beta'd (ooh, we're movin' up in the world...)

_**. ( . Ms Videl Son . ) . **_

– _Love can be black and white. SasuHina._


End file.
